Timothy McIver is a partner in the London office. His practice focuses on EU and UK competition law and regulatory matters, including obtaining clearance for complex merger investigations before the European Commission and UK competition authorities, as well as coordinating merger control and foreign direct investment approvals across multiple jurisdictions worldwide. On the contentious side, he has broad experience advising on behavioural matters, including EU and UK investigations of alleged abuses of dominance and market investigations and studies, as well as representing clients before various UK sectoral regulators. Much of his work is international in nature and involves counselling clients on their global antitrust strategy. He has particular experience advising in the fields of financial services, technology, chemicals, energy (electricity and gas), natural resources, aviation, communications and private equity.
Mr. McIver is named by Who’s Who Legal as a Global Leader for Competition, and he is also named by Expert Guides in its Rising Stars list. He is recommended by The Legal 500 UK in the area of EU and competition law, with clients describing his “excellent breadth of experience,” and “pragmatic advice.” In previous editions of the guide,he has received praise for “being incredibly knowledgeable about just about every ex-US jurisdiction” and for his ability to “distil the main issues in highly complex transactions.” Clients have described him as “a fantastic lawyer,” “one of the best in the market” and sources have also noted that he is “pragmatic, strategic and highly responsive,” with a “very good grasp of the competition landscape” and a “methodical approach.”
Mr. McIver is a member of the Competition Section of The Law Society of England and Wales. He is the author of “Navigating European M&A Regulations,” Invest Europe (January, 2024); co-author of “The Intersection Between Anti-Bribery and Corruption and Antitrust Enforcement,” a chapter examining the interplay between bribery and corruption, and antitrust enforcement, in Perspectives on Antitrust Compliance (February, 2022); the chapter on merger control issues in Insurance and Investment Management M&A, as well as the UK competition law chapter of the PLC Global Guide series. Other recent articles include “An end to below-threshold referrals under Article 22 EUMR,” LexisNexis (October, 2024); “FDI scrutiny of private equity secondary deals on the rise,” Westlaw Today (June, 2024); “How has the UK National Security and Investment Act impacted cross-border M&A?,” Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law (May, 2023); “Regulatory scrutiny of secondaries investments on the rise,” Secondaries Investor (March, 2023); “New European Union Foreign Subsides Regulation Targets Inbound M&A Activity,” The M&A Lawyer (March, 2023); “Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses ESG and Antitrust,” The Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog (March, 2023); “Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses Expanded Horizons for Class Action Litigation in the UK,” The Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog (August, 2021); “Foreign Direct Investment Rules in Selected European Countries: An Overview,” Journal of Investment Compliance (April, 2021); “Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses Whether EU Antitrust and Data Privacy Rules Are Converging,” The Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog (August, 2020); “Debevoise Discusses The UK’s Proposed National Security Review For M&A Deals,” The Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog (October, 2018); and “Debevoise On Brexit: The ‘No-Deal Deal’,” The Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog (February, 2018).
Mr. McIver graduated in 1998 with a double first class honours degree from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He went on to study at the London College of Law where he passed with distinction. He was enrolled as a solicitor in England & Wales in 2003 and in Ireland in 2017.