On July 11 and 12, 2016 the conference on “Competition – New Challenges for Georgia” was held in Borjomi, at the hotel “Rixos Borjomi”, which was organized by Tbilisi State University with the financial support of Rompetrol Georgia. The speakers of the conference were the foreign specialists of competition law: James Hanks, partner in Venable LLP, Robert Davis, counsel of Venable LLP, Bertold Bar-Bouyssiere, partner in DLA Piper, Jan Joachim Dreyer, partner in DLA Piper, Warsha Kale, counsel of Antitrust and Competition group in Mayer Brown, Alexandra Aninoiu, associate in the Antitrust and Competition group of the London office in Mayer Brown, Felix Skala, head of the competition law department of Deloitte Legal Germany. There were also Georgian professionals among the speakers of the conference: professor David Iakobidze, Irine Chikhladze, the firs category adviser of Legal and Methodological Support Department in the Competition Agency, and Nika Sergia, adviser of Competition Departments in the Competition Agency.
Among the participants of the conference there were judges, representatives of the Competition Agency, Economic Council and the Business Ombudsman as well as practitioners from different local and international law firms.
After the conference on July 13 the training was conducted on “Capital Maintenance, Mergers and Competition Principles”, which was held by James Hanks and Robert Davis.
The moderators of the conference were professors of Tbilisi State University Giorgi Tsertsvadze and Giorgi Svanadze. Giorgi Tsertsvadze who is a managing partner of our firm was involved in organizing of both conference and training very actively. In the light of current situation regarding the competition law in Georgia the main aim of the training and the conference was to raise the awareness of participants and to promote the discussion between the representatives of governmental and non-governmental sectors on essential competition law development issues.
At the end of the event the positive feedback was made by participants as well as by speakers. Foreign speakers indicated several times that the conference was very well organized and this was a big deal for Georgia. The representatives of the Competition Agency, Business Ombudsman and Economic Council confirmed their intention of the future collaboration with the organizers of the event.
Both the conference and the training was accredited by Georgian Bar Association and the participants earned 18 credits in sum.
