José Rivas is a partner with Bird & Bird based in Brussels. His practice covers all aspects of EU and competition law including in particular Articles 101 and 102, State aid and merger control and public procurement. He has extensive experience in representing leading U.S., Japanese and European clients across a broad range of industries, including aviation, media, telecommunications, energy and biotechnology. He has extensive litigation experience before the European Courts in Luxembourg - having represented clients in competition, trade and institutional EU law. He has represented clients under investigation and obtained phase I and phase II merger control clearance by the European Commission and other national competition authorities, and has filed complaints with such authorities. He also regularly organises anti-trust audits to help clients to identify any current or potential infringements of competition law and devised compliance programme to help prevent future infringements. Prior to joining Bird & Bird, José was head of a leading US firm’s Brussels office and co-head of the firm’s European competition group.