Leadership
Chairman of ICOMP, Lord Alan Watson
Lord Alan Watson is the first chairman of the Council of ICOMP.
Lord Watson has a strong grasp of the industry and regulatory issues associated with the ICOMP agenda, which he has built over the course of a long career working in the broadcast, advertising and communications industries. He began his career at the BBC, where he was regular presenter on its flagship investigative programme, "Panorama" and he is a Fellow and former Chairman of the Royal Television Society. From 1976 to 1980 he was responsible for Media at the European Commission.
Lord Watson also serves as the Chairman of Havas Media UK and CTN Communications, a provider of digital broadcasting services for FTSE 100 companies.
His business career began with four years as CEO of the advertising agency, Charles Barker City and for 10 years he served as the European Chairman of Burson-Marsteller.
As the British Chairman of the Königswinter Anglo-German Conference and President of the British German Association, Watson has a high profile in Germany, a key market for the ICOMP initiative.
Lord Watson has also published numerous publications including Europe at Risk, The Germans: who are they now?, Thatcher and Kohl: Old Rivalries Revisited and Jamestown: The Voyage of English.
Lord Watson is married and has two sons. He was educated at Diocesan College Preparatory School Cape Town, Kingswood School Bath and Jesus College Cambridge. He lives in Richmond and Somerset.
ICOMP Legal Counsel, David Wood
David Wood is ICOMP’s Legal Counsel and an expert on issues facing the online marketplace; including competition, privacy, security and IPR.
Mr. Wood is an English qualified partner and a member of the Brussels Bar based in the Brussels office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he serves as Partner-in-Charge of the office.
Mr. Wood's practice encompasses the full range of antitrust issues, including cartels, merger control (often involving the co-ordination of cases before several different competition authorities), abuse of dominance, restrictive agreements, sector inquiries and private enforcement. He has particular experience with cases involving abusive pricing and refusals to supply by dominant undertakings, as well as the establishment of joint dominance and network-related issues. He has strong sectoral expertise in the financial services and media / high-tech sectors.
Mr. Wood began his legal career in 1986 working in the London and Brussels offices of a major international law firm, where he practiced litigation and commercial law, particularly where antitrust issues were involved.
From 1992, he spent 10 years at the antitrust enforcement division of the European Commission (DG Competition) including positions as Head of the Financial Services Unit and Acting Head of the Media Unit. During his time at the Commission he was responsible for the teams involved in some of the most hard-fought cartel cases and some of the most high-profile and complex media, transport and financial services cases.
He was also a member of the Commission working groups responsible for most of the significant developments in EU antitrust policy and appeared regularly before the European Courts of Justice.
In 2002, Mr. Wood returned to private practice in Brussels. As one of the few lawyers in private practice to have held a senior position in DG Competition, he brings to his clients not only deep experience of European antitrust enforcement, but also valuable insights into how to manage risk and avoid problems.
Since leaving the Commission, he has advised and represented a wide range of companies principally in the financial services and media sectors but also in the pharmaceutical, chemical, software, consumer electronics and transport sectors.
He is a frequent writer and speaker on competition law issues and is a member of the editorial board of Competition Law Insight.
ICOMP Director, Auke Haagsma
Auke Haagsma is the Director of ICOMP. He specialises in providing strategic advice on European Union law and policy.
Mr. Haagsma assisted some of the world’s largest companies in obtaining approval of major mergers and acquisitions from the European Commission in a variety of sectors including maritime transport, fast moving consumer goods, mining, media and advertising. He also gave advice on competition and intellectual property issues to a large international association of copyrights holders and to companies and associations working in the pharmaceutical sector.
A former European Commission official, Auke Haagsma has more than 28 years of first hand experience in legislative and other procedures on a wide variety of issues. This includes not just his work inside a number of Commission Directorates-General but also working with and lobbying the European Parliament and the Council in order to secure adoption of specific proposals. During the last four years before joining the private sector he was involved in a number of EU Internal Market issues including the services proposal, the European Contract Law Initiative and the European Governance project.
From 1994 through 2000 he was Head of the Unit responsible for reviewing the public procurement regime and promoting electronic procurement via the SIMAP project. He also led the European Union’s delegation to the WTO Committee on public procurement and negotiated a bilateral agreement with Switzerland. Among his responsibilities was also the application of the EU procurement regime to contracts in the defence sector. Before taking on these responsibilities he was a head of unit in the Commission’s Competition Policy directorate-general (DG COMP) where he was in charge of international relations. He negotiated a bilateral agreement with the United States’ antitrust authorities and developed the concept of positive comity.
During the second half of the 1980s Mr. Haagsma was stationed in Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for various trade-related issues in the Commission’s Delegation. In this capacity he lobbied the US Administration and Congress on a broad range of issues, including intellectual and industrial property and export controls. From 1976 until 1986 Mr. Haagsma worked on a large variety of issues in the Commission’s Legal Services, including pharmaceutical products, food safety and labelling, chemicals legislation, transport, environment and consumer protection.
Mr. Haagsma has a law degree from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and a postgraduate degree in European Law from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He taught at Yale University and at the American School of Law at American University in Washington, D.C. In addition to his Dutch mother tongue he is fluent in English, French and German.