Dr Vincent Smith

Biography

Dr Vincent Smith teaches at ESCP Business School (London and Paris) where he is an assistant professor, having been on the faculty as since 2015. His teaching at ESCP focuses on commercial law and governance. He also consults as a solicitor on regulatory (competition), commercial and EU law, having practised in both London and in Brussels.

Before joining ESCP Vincent was a partner in private practice specialising in competition and collective redress matters. He has carried this interest through to his writing, having helped to draft the ELI/Unidroit model European Rules of Civil Procedure on collective redress which influenced the 2020 EU Directive on consumer representative actions. He has also edited books in the area of collective redress and civil procedure and wrote his PhD thesis on collective competition arbitration.

Vincent has also been a British civil servant, most notably as Senior Director at the head of the competition enforcement division at the Office of Fair Trading (the predecessor to the CMA), leading the 180 strong team combatting cartels and anticompetitive behaviour and dealing with first stage merger control. While at the OFT he oversaw the implementation of the 2002 Enterprise Act criminal cartel enforcement powers and the Act's changes to the UK merger control regime. He also took an active role in the OFT's emerging polices on competition case prioritisation and on encouraging the 'private enforcement' of competition law in the courts.

He took his first degree in England in law and French and then a Masters degree in European law at the University of Liège in Belgium. His PhD in law is from King's College, London.