Biography
Hein is a Competition and Trade Partner at Bird & Bird in Brussels - admitted to the Brussels and Amsterdam bars. He has more than 25 years of experience in Competition, Trade and Communications and Technology regulatory cases. He assists clients in cases in these fields in front of the European Commission, (national) competition and sector regulatory authorities, as well as Courts. His practice spans sectors ranging from technology and communications to pharmaceuticals and security services, machinery, retail, paper/packaging, energy, space, artificial intelligence, chemicals, and many others. Hein co-heads the integrated Brussels Competition, Trade and Public Affairs practice and the Brussels Technology and Communications sector group.
Throughout his career, Hein has been involved in a wide variety of cases involving cartels, State aid, mergers, abuse of dominance, sector regulation and trade defence. He has assisted clients in more than 20 antitrust dawn raids in his career and many cartel cases including leniency. Specific to his practice is also that his team supports clients with both EU Competition and Trade defence cases including litigation and possible Public Affairs and that he works a lot at the interface of Competition and Communications and Technology regulation. Hein uses Bird & Bird’s award-winning legal technology innovations wherever it may provide added value.
Hein is regularly involved in activities in the Antitrust, Communications and Trade community. He is a Member of the Advisory Council of the Centre for a Digital Society at the Florence European University Institute and a Guest lecturer at Leuven University in the Post-Graduate Studies ICT, IP and Media Law programme. He has written a chapter entitled State Aid in the Broadband Sector for the book EU State Aid Control (Wolters Kluwer) together with former German Commission official Oliver Stehmann, which is currently being updated. For many years, Hein has been Diversity and Inclusion Officer to the Communications Committee of the International Bar Association, and he is still engaged in D&I activities, including in particular LGBQTA+ rights.
