International law firm Addleshaw Goddard (AG) has appointed Laila Wood as a Partner in its UK Competition team.
 
Joining the firm from Clifford Chance, Laila is a specialist in advising companies on complex merger reviews as well as investigations across a range of sectors including technology, pharmaceuticals, telecommunication, financial services and private equity.
 
Laila's previous roles include positions at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer as well as secondments to Barclays and the UK's Competition & Markets Authority.

The appointment follows the announcement last month that Sarah Randall, a Senior Consultant within the same team, had been invited to join AG's Partnership.
 
Sarah has over 25 years of experience in the legal industry, 18 of which she served as Head of BP's Global Competition Law team. During her time at BP, Sarah advised the company on numerous complex international mergers as well as many cartel, RPM and market investigations before the European Commission, the CMA and other regulators.  

Since joining AG, Sarah has acted for clients active in a range of sectors, including energy, semiconductors, cybersecurity, digital advertising, cloud gaming, dairy, groceries, building materials, banking and EV charging.

Both Laila and Sarah will be based within AG's London office and together will bring the firm's UK Competition team partnership headcount to five, in addition to a competition litigation practice, led by Mark Molyneux.

Laila has excellent experience advising on a full range of high-profile competition law cases, as well as serving in a senior legal role at the CMA which centred around the UK's new digital markets regime and its mergers function. Her appointment will help to deepen our capabilities across a number of high-activity sectors including technology, telecommunications, life sciences and financial services. - Rona Bar-Isaac, Head of Competition at Addleshaw Goddard.

Sarah has been with AG for over two years and during that time has built excellent client relationships based on her strategic perspective and commercial acumen. She brings to the team extensive experience of handling global transactions and investigations, including invaluable knowledge of how in practice these processes are managed within multinational organisations. I am delighted to welcome her to the Partnership.