Biography • Competition

Paku Khan is the executive director and co-head of the competition/antitrust law team of Khaitan & Co, one of the largest and most experienced practices in India. Paku is a highly experienced competition lawyer with more than 20 years of real-world experience with key advisory roles in all aspects of Indian, EU, Irish and US competition/antitrust law, including merger control, cartel and abuse of dominance cases. He is a certified mediator with considerable competition law litigation experience and is a qualified solicitor/lawyer in multiple jurisdictions in Europe and the United States. Uniquely for India, he has served as a competition regulator in both the EU and the US, bringing insight from the 'other side of the table' to add to his expertise.

He has been based in India for more than three years, coinciding with the effective time of the (Indian) Competition Act, 2002. Prior to joining Khaitan & Co, he served as the director of the competition law practice at Amarchand Mangaldas. During his time in India, he has been involved in considerable advisory work in the implementation of the Competition Act, including having principally authored a seminal article in 2011 on the jurisdictional limitations of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in merger control cases.

Throughout his career, Paku has had key roles in high-profile merger, cartels and dominance cases before the CCI, the European Commission and the Irish Competition Authority (ICA), as well as US antitrust regulators/courts. In addition to his considerable work in India as a consultant in a variety of matters under the Competition Act on important cases involving the cement, tyres, steel, coal, construction and FMCG sectors, his wide-ranging experience in EU/US antitrust matters includes acting for Heineken in acquiring Scottish & Newcastle, securing an unconditional clearance in the first EUMR Article 9 Irish referral; acting for Ryanair in its attempted acquisitions of Aer Lingus in 2006 and 2008; serving as rapporteur for the EU Member States' advisory committee in the European Commission's 2004 landmark decision in Microsoft Corporation; acting as lead in the ICA's abuse of dominance investigations regarding Galileo CRS and TicketMaster; prosecuting dairy and oil/gas cartels in the US; and designing competition law compliance programmes and dawn raid plans.

Paku has considerable experience in the area of dawn raids by competition law regulators. As a former regulator, he has conducted nearly 20 dawn raids, including with the European Commission, and has also defended numerous raids in the private sector. While at the ICA, he was responsible for legal issues associated with forensic technology employed during or after a dawn raid.

Paku is a noted speaker throughout India, the EU, the US and Japan, and has participated as a speaker and panellist in numerous competition law forums throughout the world, including, most recently at the International Chamber of Commerce in London in February 2013.

Paku is an honours graduate of Vanderbilt University (1988) and Vanderbilt Law School (1991). He is qualified in multiple EU/US jurisdictions and has been cited as a leading competition lawyer by The International Who's Who of Competition Lawyers, Chambers and Partners for his work in Ireland, and the Indian Business Law Journal.