Independent UK law firm Travers Smith is opening in Brussels to enhance its competition law offering, while also planning to shutter its Paris office.

Stephen Whitfield, the firm’s head of competition, and competition law partner Nigel Seay – his predecessor in that role – will split their time between London and Brussels to lead the new office as a strategic move to effectively reinforce the firm’s capacity to address EU regulatory challenges.

At the same time as opening in Brussels, Travers Smith is also planning to wind down its Paris office which it opened in 1991, leaving the Belgian capital as the firm’s only international location. A spokesperson said the Paris office “will be closed in due course after careful consideration and consultation”.

“There will be no redundancies and all staff currently working in Paris will be treated as part of our London office,” the spokesperson added.

Travers Smith cited its international client base and growth in its antitrust practice, which includes EU and UK qualified lawyers, as reasons for the Brussels opening – both for non-contentious EU merger control matters and advisory and regulatory mandates, as well as contentious EU work in the investigative, behavioural and cartel aspects of competition law.

It also bolsters the firm’s collective redress offering, given the close synergies between pre-Brexit European Commission findings against corporates that subsequently led to UK collective action claims, such as the Mastercard litigation and the PACCAR claim, in which Travers Smith acted.  

Travers Smith’s managing partner Edmund Reed, who was re-elected in December, said: “The opening of our Brussels office meets our commitment of being able to advise clients on all aspects of EU competition law. We want to be able to continue to provide our clients with the best legal and sector expertise and our presence in Brussels will further enhance our already strong competition offering.”

Whitfield agreed: “Clients are front and centre of any strategic decision we make, and our office in Brussels will enable us to continue to support our existing clients and offer us opportunities for the future expansion of our competition practice.”

Opening a Brussels office demonstrates that clients are being well-served by a practice already adept at navigating EU regulatory landscapes from a London desk-based operation, by scaling up to a physical presence. The move is also in keeping with other independent UK law firms.

Slaughter & May, for example, has maintained a Brussels office since 2007. As part of its ‘best-friends’ strategy, Slaughter & May has close ties with the competition practices of other independent European practices, providing co-ordinated advice to clients covering leading jurisdictions, sharing its Brussels facilities with Hengeler Mueller, Bredin Prat and Uria Menéndez.

Other post-Brexit openings include Paul Weiss’s opening in Brussels in April 2024, followed by further hires in May, while Goodwin opened there in January this year. Other firms that have opened in Brussels recently include Japanese law firm Nishimura & Asahi, while CEE-focused Wolf Theiss opened in November 2024.