Benoît Merkt

Managing Partner at Lenz & Staehelin's Geneva office, Dr. Benoît Merkt is a leading expert in competition law and is renowned for his first-rate practice. He specializes in all areas of Swiss and European merger control work and competition law, notably in the banking and finance, energy, high-tech, infrastructures (electricity), consumer goods, chemical, luxury goods, motor-car distribution, public broadcasting and retail sectors. He has been responsible for a large number of merger notifications to the Swiss Competition Commission and co-ordinated multi-jurisdictional merger filings. Benoît Merkt advises in contentious and non-contentious matters and has acted in high profile cases on alleged abuses of dominant positions, vertical restraints, cartels and public procurement.

Benoît Merkt is also head of the firm's Foundations and Philanthropy practice group. A renowned expert in the legal structuring of charitable foundations in Switzerland, he has been one of the country's leading advisors in this area for the last 20 years. Benoît Merkt has incorporated some of the most significant foundations for global philanthropists. He serves on the Board and acts as Chairman of several major Swiss charitable foundations. Benoît Merkt is the author of a recent reference book on Swiss foundation law (published by Stämpfli, 2021).

He graduated from the University of Neuchâtel with a doctor of law degree on international cooperation between competition authorities (2001, Walther Hug Prize), having already obtained an MJur in European and comparative law from the University of Oxford (1996, Berrow scholarship). Benoît Merkt was a research assistant in international economic law at the University of Berne and a lecturer in European and Swiss competition law at the University of Geneva. Benoît Merkt joined Lenz & Staehelin in 1999 and has been a Partner since 2006.