Bernt Elsner

Bernt Elsner is partner and leading expert in the fields of public procurement, antitrust and public law. He heads the Austrian practice for EU competition/antitrust, is a member of the management team of the international CMS Competition & EU Practice Group and global head of the CMS Public Procurement Practice Group.

He studied law at the University of Vienna and business administration at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. In 1993-94 he worked as a research assistant at the Austrian Constitutional Court for the constitutional judges Prof. Dr. Karl Spielbüchler and Prof. Dr. Karl Korinek. In 1997 he practised European competition law at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in Brussels. From 2004 to 2010 he was Managing Partner of CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz. He has more than 23 years of professional experience in Vienna and Brussels.

He advises and represents national and international companies in national and European merger control proceedings, especially in cross-border mergers, on horizontal antitrust law, especially in the area of submission cartels, vertical distribution structures, abuse control and state aid law.