Mario Ybar, Garrigues/courtesy photo

Spanish law firm Garrigues has hired Mario Ybar, former acting national economic prosecutor for the Chilean antitrust authority, to head its antitrust practice in Chile.

Ybar told Law.com that after 15 years in the public sector, he felt it was time to take on "new challenges". He has spent his entire career at the antitrust body, where he helped craft a legal framework that allowed for more effective crackdowns on anti-competitive behaviour.

At Garrigues, he said the challenge will be to prevent the framework from "generating excessive caution that removes dynamism from the market or deters competitive business".

Ybar, 42, participated in the design and implementation of the concentration control regulations, which have been in force since July 2017. The reform established a two-step notification system for antitrust approvals and set a legal standard for objecting to mergers.

The OECD describes Chile as a country with "high market concentrations in all productive sectors of the economy". The reform addressed a "soft law" approach to M&A characterised by a semi-voluntary reporting system to alert to potential extensions in market share, the OECD says.

The new regulations came with a significant bureaucratic burden for a host of operations that do not pose a threat to competition, Ybar said. The Chilean body recently raised notification thresholds so as to reduce the compliance burden for companies, he added.

On the monopoly front, Ybar sees a need for Chile to raise its voice in the global discussion about digital markets.

Ybar qualified as a lawyer at Universidad de Chile and holds a Master's degree in antitrust law from University College London.

He joins Garrigues after a six-month statutory period of ineligibility for public officials, as mandated by Chilean law.

Garrigues expects its new hire will strengthen the firm's integrated competition practice, especially for clients with activities across multiple jurisdictions in Latin America.

Javier Ybáñez, a senior partner in charge of the Latin American practice at Garrigues, described Ybar as a key hire for the firm.

The Garrigues antitrust team, coordinated by partner Susana Cabrera, includes several former government officials from across Latin America and Europe. The firm employs Miguel de la Calle, former superintendent of industry and trade in Colombia, and former European Commission officials such as José Luis Buendía in Brussels.