Leading City firms are bolstering their competition practices across China as they prepare for new anti-monopoly laws set to come into effect on 1 August.

Firms including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Lovells and Herbert Smith are among those strengthening their capabilities in the region, while DLA Piper has launched a new training initiative.

Lovells has seconded competition consultant Kirstie Nicholson from Brussels to Shanghai, while Freshfields seconded partner Alex Potter from London to Beijing at the beginning of this year to head up the Chinese antitrust, competition and trade practice. The magic circle firm also promoted Beijing-based Michael Han to counsel in the practice group late last year.

DLA Piper, meanwhile, is providing training to clients' in-house legal teams about issues raised by the new anti-monopoly law coming into effect later this year after more than a decade of consultations.

Before, different sets of competition rules applied in China but the new law ties them all together and carries stricter enforcement penalties.

Nicholson told Legal Week: "The previous regulations sometimes came without penalties, which meant some companies did not bother to comply. The new legislation comes with penalties and gives power to stop cartel-type operations."

Herbert Smith, which already has around three partners working in the field in China, including Shanghai managing partner Graeme Johnston, promoted a competition associate to counsel in May this year.

Johnston said: "There is a lot of interest in the new law and a lot of concern. The laws before were quite bitty, and the enforcement patchy. Although the new law is more coherent, the key is how it will be enforced. On paper it looks like European laws, but in reality it will be very different. The whole legal system is radically different in China."