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Thomas Hoehn
Independent Advisor and Researcher Antitrust Economics and Compliance. Special Interest Economics of Football and Cities.
Thomas Hoehn is an experienced economist and academic with a distinguished career in antitrust economics, business consulting, and public policy. He currently serves as a Visiting Researcher at Imperial College London, a position he has held since October 2015.2 His research interests at Imperial College focus on the economics of smart cities, incentives for data sharing, and antitrust policy in innovation markets.2
Academic Career
Prior to his current role, Hoehn was a Visiting Professor at Imperial College Business School from 2003 to 2015.2 During this time, he taught courses on Business Economics, Merger Control, Smart Cities, and Intellectual Property in MBA and MSc Management programs.2 He also served as the Program Director of the Executive MBA from 2005 to 2007.2
Professional Experience
Alongside his academic work, Hoehn has an extensive professional background:
- Managing Director of Antitrust & TradeRx GmbH since October 2013, providing expert advice on antitrust policy, economic and investment promotion strategies, and trade policy matters.2
- Senior Advisor at Mazars LLP since August 2015, offering monitoring trustee services.2
- Former Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers from 2000 to 2009, where he served as Head of Economics.2
- Panel Member of the UK Competition and Markets Authority from 2009 to 2017.2
Education
Hoehn holds a Master's Degree in Economics from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a Lic Oec from the University of St. Gallen - HSG.2
Expertise and Contributions
Thomas Hoehn is known for his expertise in applied economic research, market analysis, and competition policy. He has published articles relating to various sectors as an academic competition economist.1 His work spans across antitrust economics, compliance, and the economics of football and cities.2
Highlights
Big Tech Remedies: What´s the score?
In January’s issue of the European Competition Law Review, I reviewed recent case law and legislative developments regarding the choice of #antitrust and #merger remedies for #bigtech companies in the EU and UK in an article co-authored with Justin Menezes and Alison Young of #mazars.
We identified a close relationship between the case law and legislative developments with a trend towards the adoption of a clearly-defined range of specific behavioural remedies even though the two jurisdictions have taken different approaches.
As the Table below shows of the 14 cases reviewed more than half resulted in remedies which are very specific and tailored to the digital economy relating to data access and usage and to platform access and interoperability. Three remedies took the form of a requirement to ‘cease and desist’, meaning that the firm was ordered to stop a particular form of conduct identified as harmful to competition. There is only one full ownership separation (CMA in Facebook/Giphy) and one case of operational separation (BKartA Facebook).
We believe that consideration of the break-up of Big Tech companies is likely to remain an exception. However, other more structural remedies short of full ownership separation will become more prominent. This would involve the operational separation of businesses and commercial activities of dominant platform in competition with platform-dependent third parties as well as data separation and ring-fencing measures.
#OpenBanking – an innovative #competitionremedy gets a restart! On 5 November 2021 the #CompetitionandMarketAuthority published an Update on Open Banking that deserves wider attention, not least for the broader implications for the design and implementation of innovative but complex remedies in the FinTech and BigTech space. Open Banking originated with the CMA Market Inquiry into UK Retail Banking where I was involved as a panel member. Our report came out in 2016 and led to the CMA Order that created the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) and Open Banking Ltd (OBL). The Payment Services Regulations 2017 took Open Banking further providing a right for regulated third party providers to access payment accounts and make payments subject to customer consent. Four years on, the OBIE has notched up considerable successes promoting data sharing for personal and SME banking customers through the development of standard APIs and an ecosystem of over 330 firms generating 5.83 billions of API calls in 2020. A major well-documented achievement. But with the success came management and governance problems at the OBIE/OBL which were not envisaged to require up to 200 staff and substantial funding from the 9 major UK retail banks. Following an independent investigation, the CMA is now trying to improve matters via an effective longer-term framework, thereby establishing the next implementation phase in 2022. Lessons learnt include considerations of governance, less power to be vested in a Trustee, and more detailed monitoring and reporting than is typically undertaken by regulators. See:
