Global law firm Shearman & Sterling today announces the appointment of Sylvain Petit as an Antitrust counsel, based in Brussels.

Sylvain’s practice focuses on European, French and Belgian competition law, with the main areas of his practice encompassing merger control, anticompetitive practices (anticompetitive agreements and abuse of dominance) and State aid issues. He regularly advises French and foreign clients in a wide variety of industries, with a special focus on the energy, insurance, telecommunications, transportation and pharmaceutical sectors.

“Sylvain’s appointment reflects the firm’s commitment to grow our antitrust and corporate practices in Europe and globally and service our clients’ needs in the critical area of competition law,” said Matthew Readings, Global Antitrust Practice Group Leader and Head of the Brussels office at Shearman & Sterling. “Like many areas of law, antitrust is fast paced and always changing. The antitrust challenges our clients are facing are becoming ever more complex, and we are delighted to welcome Sylvain to our team to further strengthen our global client offering.”

This appointment continues the busy period for Shearman & Sterling in Europe. In the past 12 months, the firm has announced the hire of a four-partner M&A and Finance team in Paris (Xavier Norlain, Jeremy Scemama, Maud Manon and Matthieu Lampel) and the hire of Finance partner Florian Ziegler in Munich. In addition, Shearman & Sterling has added six new partners to its London office including Matthew Skinner (International Arbitration), Maegen Morrison (M&A), Phil Baynes (Funds), Shameer Shah (Leveraged Finance), Michael Mountain (M&A) and Julia Derrick (Project Development & Finance).

Sylvain joins Shearman & Sterling from Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.