Olswang is moving into the international arena by opening an office in Brussels and snapping up a Belgian competition specialist from Coudert Brothers.

Dirk van Liedekerke, a six-year associate at Couderts in Brussels, who specialises in telecommunications competition work, will become a partner at Olswang and head the new office.

Olswang is recruiting two other European lawyers to work with Liedekerke.

Liedekerke will join ex-Couderts colleague Colin Long in Olswang's international competition team.

Long, a leading telecoms partner, defected to Olswang's London office last October to jointly head its telecommunications and IT unit.

Liedekerke said Long's presence at Olswang and the firm's UK expertise had been big factors behind his decision to leave Couderts.

"The formula at Olswang works well," he said. "The telecoms practice is extremely focused and they understand the issues facing the industry."

Olswang chief executive Jonathan Goldsmith said the new office would help his firm service the growing international need for telecoms competition work.

"As the IT, media and communications worlds converge, clients are faced with increasingly complex competition and regulatory challenges.

Our Brussels office is a significant step in Olswang's continuing development of an international sector-focused practice."

Goldsmith added that Liedekerke was a "heavy hitter" who had worked with Long on numerous major telecoms projects and studies for the European Commission.

Stephen Spinks, managing partner of Couderts in Brussels, said he was "extremely sad" to see Liedekerke go, but "these things happen all the time".

"Dirk has been seconded to Belgacom [Belgium's equivalent of BT] for the past year-and-a-half, so we haven't seen that much of him," Spinks said.

"But we rate him very, very highly and expect to hear a lot more about him in the future."

Spinks said there were no concrete plans to replace Liedekerke, but said Couderts, which has 20 lawyers in Belgium, was growing all the time. "I am personally working on two very big telecoms acquisitions," Spinks said. "So things are going very well."