Rob is a Director at CEG Europe and heads CEG’s Dutch office in The Hague. He has extensive experience in the application of economics to competition and regulation. He has worked on numerous cartel cases, abuse of dominance cases and mergers and acquisitions, in a broad range of sectors, including health care, information technology, trade, financial services, media, retail, manufacturing, travel and transport sectors. He has also done work in telecoms, postal, and energy regulation.
Rob has given expert evidence in several court cases, and represented the Netherlands on the advisory committee in several competition cases of the European Commission, including the landmark case against Microsoft concerning interoperability of the Microsoft operating system with third party software and the tying of Internet Explorer to Windows.
Before joining CEG, Rob was an expert economist in the Office of the Chief Economist at the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets. He was the account manager for the Competition Department and the Legal Department, advised the Board of ACM, department directors and case teams on economic issues and reviewed draft decisions. Prior to that Rob was an associate professor of Industrial Economics and Organization at the University of Groningen.
Rob holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Economics and a M.Sc. in Econometrics and Quantitative Economics from the University of Groningen.
He is native in Dutch, and fluent in English and German.
Recent work
Rob has advised news curation service provider Blendle in proceedings against DPG Media concerning refusal to supply and led an exploratory study by CEG into the factors contributing to store vacancy in the Netherlands for the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM).
He is currently involved in the truck cartel damages claim in front of the District Court of Amsterdam on behalf of collective claim foundation STCC against the European truck manufacturers, and the collective consumer claims of Stichting Consumenten Competition Claims against Samsung and LG. Rob is also working on several other competition damages cases, in the financial sector, consumer electronics, manufacturing industries and digital markets, among others.
