Herbert Smith Freehills Enhances Competition and TMT Practices with Significant New Hire

Herbert Smith Freehills Enhances Competition and TMT Practices with Significant New Hire

Herbert Smith Freehills has strengthened its technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) and competition regulatory and trade (CRT) practices with the hiring of Andrea Appella as a Consultant in its Milan office.

Appella is a qualified lawyer and solicitor with 25 years of international in-house experience in the creative industries (audio-visual/media/technology). He specialises in competition, intellectual property, and regulatory law, and most recently served as Head of Global Competition at Netflix. His previous in-house roles include Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at News Corporation/21st Century Fox, Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Warner Bros/Time Warner, and Director at MTV Europe.

Throughout his career, Appella has been involved in a wide spectrum of activities, including mergers and acquisitions, recent notable examples being the Fox/Disney deal. His expertise extends to competition proceedings, market and regulatory investigations, copyright and digital single market policy, as well as the regulation of audio-visual media services and digital platforms, and artificial intelligence.

While serving in international groups, he took on significant responsibilities covering all media sectors such as movies, TV networks, pay-TV platforms, music, sports, publishing, news, online streaming, and digital platforms. He provided valuable guidance and counsel on some of the most transformative competition and regulatory cases and legislative developments that have significantly shaped the audio-visual and creative industry in recent decades. His contributions have earned him recognition, including his mention in Global Competition Review's list of top in-house antitrust lawyers worldwide (Corporate Counsel 2019) and his inclusion among the "Stars of the In-House Competition Bar" in Global Competition Review (March 2005).

Before embarking on his in-house career, Appella served as a lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills, the firm where he initiated his professional journey and remained until 1997.

Additionally, he assumed the institutional position of Director of International Affairs at the UK Office of Fair Trading, which was the precursor to the Competition and Markets Authority. In this role, he oversaw and managed relationships with key entities including the European Commission, the OECD, and the International Competition Network. Furthermore, he served as the co-chair of the Antitrust Committee within the International Bar Association, and he presently holds the position of a non-governmental advisor to the International Competition Network. Notably, he has recently engaged in collaborative efforts with the Italian Ministry of Culture.

At present, Andrea Appella holds the position of a Visiting Professor at King's College London, where he instructs the course "Competition and Intellectual Property in the Media Industry: Law and Practice" within the Master in Law (LLM) programme. He is additionally a member of the ICPC (Innovation, Competition, and Regulation Policy Centre) at the European University of Rome. Furthermore, he serves on the Steering Committee of the Next Generation Lawyers program in partnership with LuceLabCinecittà and the high-level training company BeRight.