The firm

Hexagon is an economic consultancy specialising in competition, regulation and damages evaluation.

We advise our clients on all types of competition law matters, whether antitrust proceedings before competition authorities, merger notifications, State aid cases or civil litigations. Based in Brussels and Paris, our team includes experienced economists from France, Belgium and Germany.

We approach each case with scientific rigor, relying on state of the art theoretical and empirical tools to provide high-quality expert services. We strive to develop innovative solutions, tailor- made to address our clients’ needs and the specificities of the case.

We do not hide behind specialist’s jargon, and recognize that clever but straightforward empirical evidence often makes for the most compelling argument. Whenever sophisticated techniques are warranted, we make sure to maintain accessibility by laying things out clearly and explaining what these techniques add to the debate.

As economic experts, we stick to the facts and provide independent advice, because we are convinced that this is what best serves our clients in the long run.

Laurent Eymard

+33 2 895 36 21

+33 495 36 12 60

+33 6 76 37 52 07

leymard@
hexagon-economics

Location:
Brussels and Paris

Language skills:
French, English

Laurent Eymard, Hexagon’s founding partner, has more than 12 years of experience advising clients in a wide range of competition cases. Over the years, he has been involved in several merger, antitrust and state aid cases before the European Commission, as well as other European jurisdictions especially in France and Belgium. Laurent has extensive experience advising clients in the notification of complex mergers to competition authorities, especially in cases requiring an analysis of local competition dynamics or bidding data. Laurent also has experience providing expert economic evidence in civil litigations in a wide range of sector including telecommunication, air transportation or fast-moving consumer goods. His experience includes working for both defendants and claimants in high profile litigations concerning concerted practices and complex abuses of dominant position.

Selected project experience

• Advising Lafarge in the context of its merger with Holcim in 2014, which was the biggest ever tie-up in the cement industry and involved a complex assessment of competition on hundreds of local markets.
• Advising Alstom in relation to the acquisition of its energy business by General Electric. The case mainly raised horizontal concerns in the market for heavy-duty gas turbines, which required an economic analysis of the likelihood of a post-merger price increase in the context of a bidding market.
• Advising Suez in relation of its acquisition of the Water and Process Technologies business of GE. The transaction gave rise to both horizontal overlaps and foreclosure concerns.
• Expert advice to a large telecom operator in the context of several FCA investigations regarding alleged abuses of dominance.
• Advising several large French banks in the context of an FCA investigation regarding multilateral interchange fees.
• Advising an airline company in the context of damage claims in the UK, the Netherlands, Brazil and Australia following cartel decisions by the European commission and several other regulators worldwide.
• Expert advice to a CRT producer in the context of follow-on litigations in the Netherlands and the UK, following cartel decisions by the European Commission and several other regulators worldwide.
• Advising a horserace betting operator in the context of a damage claim initiated by a competitor in Belgium following the liberalisation of online betting.
• Advising a car manufacturer in the context of the notification of an R&D Aid for the development of a hybrid diesel engine – Counterfactual analysis, preparation of the business plan.
• Advising Alstom in the context of the notification of aid measures to the Supergrid research progamme to develop innovative energy transmission networks – Counterfactual analysis, review of the business plan, effect on competiton.

Selected publications

• “The ECJ interim judgement in Coty Germany: an economic perspective” with G.Labate, in The Coty judgment: Online selective distribution and platform bans, May 2018, Concurrences Review N° 2-2018, Art. N° 86631
• Chapters on market definition and on the estimation of damages in follow-on litigation in Le Lamy Droit Économique, Wolters Kluwer, 2018.
• “Remarks on the calculation of local market shares”, with A. Chapsal, Concurrences, N°1-2011, 37-41.
• “Credit Constraints and the Cyclicality of R&D Investment: Evidence from France”, 2010, with P. Aghion, P. Askenazy, N. Berman and G. Cette, Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 1001-1024.

Qualifications

• Master of Arts in EC Competition Law, King’s College London
• M.Sc. economics and statistics, ENSAE (Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique)
• M.Sc. finance and corporate strategy, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris