Xavier Boutin

Managing Director

Xavier Boutin is a competition expert with over twenty years’ experience in economic and econometric modelling for the analysis of competition cases, business strategies and the evaluation of public policies, including state aid.

Dr Boutin’s experience spans a wide variety of high-level antitrust, merger and state aid cases, including in front of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). He has also worked on various policy issues, including 101 and 102 guidelines, State Aid Modernisation, food and retail and numerous others.

Dr Boutin has led challenging mergers across a variety of sectors, including energy, oil and gas, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), media, information technology (IT), mining/quarrying and construction.

Before joining BRG, Dr Boutin was a founding partner of Positive Competition, an economic consultancy. He previously held an expert role in a consulting firm and also spent almost eight years in the chief economist team of the European Commission’s (EC) Directorate-General for Competition (DG Comp).

Who’s Who Legal has recognised Dr Boutin as a Thought Leader in competition economics. He contributed to the 102 guidance paper, the 101 horizontal guidelines and Block Exemption Regulation (BER), as well as on policy initiatives in the food chain and across competitiveness of the European industry. He also contributed to the State Aid Modernisation, particularly in the areas of research and development and innovation (R&D&I) and regional aid. Further, Dr Boutin was an influential proponent of the obligation to evaluate state aid schemes and the lead author of the corresponding guidance documents.

Dr Boutin is a founder and boardmember of l’Entente, the association of French-speaking competition law practitioners in Brussels. He is fluent in English, French and Polish.