The Moot, which was hosted by King's (14-16 June), is open to law students from across the globe and is sponsored by leading law firm, Herbert Smith Freehills. Other teams at the Oral Round came from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, India, the Netherlands, Singapore and the UK.  

The School has hosted the event since 2014 and this is the first time that King's has been awarded the Winning Team prize. This year’s team comprised of Alexandre Taboni, Jan Przerwa, Abigail Beardsworth and Niharika Parshurampuria, all of whom are studying for a Competition Law LLM at King’s. Niharika, who also won the Best Advocate Award, completed the LLB at King’s in 2017. The team was coached by Florian Bourdon, Legal Consultant at Allen & Overy and Samantha Zakka of the Belgian Competition Authority. Both Florian and Samantha completed the Competition Law LLM at King’s in 2017.   

The problem concerned a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union from the (fictional) Ruritanian High Court. The Ruritanian Court raised questions relating to the compatibility with competition law of aspects of a selective distribution system for premium brand sports shoes.   

The final was judged by: Bo Vesterdorf, Panel Chair, former president of the European Court of First Instance (CFI), now the General Court, in Luxembourg; Dorothy Livingston, Consultant at Herbert Smith Freehills; Roland Green, former Deputy General Counsel and newly appointed Panel Member at Competition and Markets Authority (CMA); Professor William Kovacic, former Chairman of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), non-executive Board Director at CMA and Visiting Professor at King’s; and Professor Alison Jones, King’s.  

King's has a long tradition of expertise in global competition law. It is home to a large community of competition lawyers and one of the largest research clusters of competition lawyers in the world. The School teaches competition law students from across the globe on LLB, LLM, Executive LLM, Diploma, MA and PhD programmes.