Stephen Dnes is a “leading competition lawyer” (Business Money, September 2025). He has over fifteen years of experience gained with leading international law firms in Brussels, London, and New York.

Stephen’s research has been featured in a range of leading scholarly journals. In addition, it has featured in The Times, CityAM, The Spectator, ICLG, Law360, Law.com, Legal Futures, the Solicitors Journal, Politico, Luxurious Magazine, and Essex TV.

He is frequently asked to provide expert analysis of the boundaries of competition law:

• In 2025, the Institute of Economic Affairs asked Stephen to provide the expert report Class Act: The case for reforming Britain’s class action system. The report was widely picked up in the press, and Stephen further represented the Institute in the UK Department of Business and Trade’s reform consultation.
• Also in 2025, the UK Competition Law Association asked Stephen to provide an expert report Relative Market Power under UK Competition Law which it then provided to the International League of Competition Law. Stephen was invited to the League’s Congress in Vienna to represent the report in October 2025.
• In 2024, Stephen played a pivotal role in the once-in-a-generation competition law reform known as the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which created a new regime for anti-monopoly regulation in digital markets. The Prosperity Institute commissioned Stephen to author an expert report entitled The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill: How to protect prosperity and innovation in the digital economy. Stephen advised several prominent MPs in their Parliamentary negotiations, and drafted several sections of the new law.

Reflecting this experience, Stephen is frequently consulted on related matters. For instance, Stephen was closely involved in the prominent case by which the UK CMA required Google to keep the third-party cookie in the Google Chrome browser. The leading trade publication AdExchanger repeatedly sought out Stephen’s prognostications in this widely discussed matter.

Stephen has also been involved in many prominent EU, UK and US cases in technology and media markets in recent years, including USA v Google (Search), USA v Google (AdTech), UK CMA (Mobile Operating Systems and Google Search) and X v GARM (ND Texas, 2024).

In June 2025, Stephen met with Congressional staffers on behalf of the Digital Advertising Alliance to address whether there should be a federal data privacy law in the USA. In November 2022, he had the last word at the US Federal Trade Commission’s public hearing on Commercial Surveillance and Data Security, and was engaged to provide comments to the California Attorney General’s Office and pertinent trade bodies on related matters.

Stephen has taught competition law and private law subjects at all levels of sophistication, from introductory lectures to PhD seminars. He has held teaching and research appointments at eight of the world’s top 250 universities (Times Higher World University Rankings).

In addition to his lectureship at Royal Holloway, Stephen is an invited fellow at the Dynamic Competition Initiative, a collaboration between EUI Florence, UC Berkeley, and VU Amsterdam on emergent research themes in competition law.

Stephen is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of Cambridge. He is admitted as an attorney in the State of New York and before the US District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.