In brief
The 29th IBA Annual Competition Conference was held in Florence on 12–13 September 2025. This flagship event organized by the International Bar Association’s Antitrust Section brought together leading regulators, senior legal counsel, academics, and antitrust experts from around the world to discuss and shape the future of competition law and policy.
In depth
Key lawyers from Baker McKenzie’s EMEA Antitrust & Competition team attended the conference. Read the themes and takeaways here.
Samantha Mobley – IBA Advisory Board member
“Florence was a fitting place to see agencies explore the renaissance of industrial policy and for IBA lawyers from 50 countries try to build bridges across various divides. The pace of change in markets and politics may be dizzying at times but it’s clear that the antitrust community comprising agencies and lawyers is up for the challenge.”
Gavin Bushell – Co-chair IBA Mergers Working Group
“EU merger control is at inflection point. The consultation on the merger guidelines, involving a refresh of the bloc’s approach to merger control, is ambitious but dealmakers and advisers are getting impatient as they wait to understand the policy vision on key subjects such as scale, resilience, efficiencies, etc. The challenge is for the Commission to find the right balance between thinking it all through and acting fast enough on matters that are central to EU competitiveness. Whatever happens in the next months will set the scene for a decade plus of deals and will have an enormous ripple effect on other agencies who follow the Commission’s work very closely.”