Biography • Competition

François Renard is counsel in our Beijing office where he leads our China antitrust practice. Prior to joining Allen & Overy, François was based in Brussels and Paris and he has more than 15 years experience advising on EU antitrust and trade law.

François has extensive experience advising Western and Asian clients on PRC, EU, and other national competition laws, including merger control, anticompetitive agreements and concerted practices, the interaction between intellectual property and antitrust laws, abuse of dominance, market investigations, antitrust compliance, and EU state aid. Since joining our Beijing office, he has assisted Western and Asian companies in many multi-jurisdictional antitrust matters throughout the Asian region and in Europe. François has worked on various complex merger matters in China including the award winning Seagate-Samsung transaction. He has acted for international clients including Seagate, Joy Global, Berkshire Hathaway, Tyco, Novartis, GSK, Huntsman and TNT, as well as Chinese clients, including for example Jinchuan Group Limited, Huawei Technologies, Wanhua, among others.

François is one of only several EU experts invited to speak to and train PRC antitrust officials in recent years; he has also been invited by the OECD to act in a similar capacity. He was vice chair of the legal working group and chair of the competition sub-working group of the EU Chamber of Commerce in Beijing between 2009 and 2011.

He is also recognised as a leader in assisting companies throughout the world in anti-dumping and trade sanctions proceedings, as well as in various international trade matters, including WTO-related matters.

François is listed as a leading antitrust lawyer in PLC's cross-border competition category in China, as well as in The International Who's Who of Competition Lawyers, Global Competition Review and by Chambers. He is also listed in the Expert Guide as one of the world's leading international trade lawyers.

François has recently authored several articles on merger control in China, in particular "Lessons from the merger control regime in China" (Competition & Antitrust Review 2011 of Euromoney Yearbook), "A Practitioner's Look at Merger Control Remedies in China" (CPI 2012 (2)), and "Some key features of merger control remedies in China" (Competition & Antitrust Review 2012 of Euromoney Yearbook). His article "EU and Chinese antidumping and anti-subsidy proceedings: A politically driven process" was published in the Euromoney Guide.

François received his law degree from Free University of Brussels in 1995, LLM from European Law Institute of European Studies (Brussels) in 1996 and Duke University in 1997. He speaks English, French, Italian and Dutch.

Chambers Asia Pacific 2012 states: 'François Renard has a really strong grasp of the PRC and Asia legal landscape,' and adds that he 'is deemed by sources to be 'dynamic and pragmatic: he knows the law and the way the regulators work.''

Allen & Overy's antitrust and competition team comprises over 100 specialists located across the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the United States. We advise corporates and financial institutions on their global antitrust policies, litigation and regulatory strategies and have acted on some of the highest-profile and most complex cases in recent years.