Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) has bolstered its City EU & competition practice with the hire of BP competition lawyer Andrew Hockley.

Hockley, who will take BLP's competition partner headcount to four across the London and Brussels offices, has served as EC competition counsel at BP for the last three years.

He is expected to join the City law firm in June after working out a three-month notice period at BP. He joined BP from magic circle firm Allen & Overy (A&O), where he served as a senior associate working on cases including Sun Microsystems' landmark complaint against Microsoft.

At BLP, Hockley will join a team advising on a broad range of competition matters, including mergers and cartels, as well as cases including state aid, public procurement and abuse of dominance. BLP launched its competition practice in 2005, with the practice now standing at 16 dedicated lawyers across London and Brussels, as well as five lawyers in Moscow.

Hockley is the second partner BLP has brought in this year, following the hire of James Duncan to launch a newly formed dedicated derivatives practice. Duncan will join the firm in March from Linklaters, where he spent 13 years as a lawyer.

Commenting on the hire of Hockley, EU & competition chief David Harrison said: "Andrew is an excellent lawyer, with whom I worked at my former firm. He is technically outstanding and commercially astute."

Last year BLP brought in 12 new laterals, including former A&O leveraged finance partner Andrew Bamber, commercial litigator Graham Shear from Teacher Stern and former Clifford Chance tax partner Murray North.