Government and Institutions

ITCU Advisory Council in London next month


The IEA is looking forward to welcoming the Advisory Council for the new International Trade and Competition Unit in June for a series of meetings and events. The group brings in a wealth of expertise in trade and competition issues from around the world.

Visitors include:

Sir Lockwood Smith

Sir Lockwood is a former Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ambassador to Ireland.

In the early 1980s he managed part of the then NZ Dairy Board’s marketing activities around southern and eastern Asia. Elected to the New Zealand Parliament in 1984, during a 29 year Parliamentary career, Sir Lockwood has held the ministerial portfolios in education, tourism, deputy finance, forestry, agriculture and international trade.

As Minister of Agriculture he initiated reform of the NZ Dairy Board that led to the formation of Fonterra. The highly successful “100% Pure” marketing campaign for Tourism NZ, he established while Minister of Tourism and was the first Trade Minister in the world to sign China up to the WTO.  Sir Lockwood was involved in developing New Zealand’s global trade strategy, initiating the study that led to the ASEAN-Australia NZ FTA and the agreement with Singapore that ultimately led to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Alan Oxley

Alan Oxley is Principal of ITS Global, consultants on global issues. It is based in Melbourne, Australia. He is Chairman of the Australian APEC Study Centre at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is also a Member of the Advisory Board of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels (ECIPE).

Before establishing ITS in 1990, Alan was a career diplomat. He served in Singapore, at the United Nations in New York and in Geneva. He transferred to the Trade Department in 1985 and served as Australian Ambassador to the GATT, the predecessor of the World Trade Organisation until 1989. He served as Chairman of the GATT Council and the GATT Contracting Parties.

Eduardo Perez-Motta

Eduardo serves clients in a wide range of competition and regulatory matters. He has fluent relationships with a broad array of senior civil servants in government and regulatory agencies.

Eduardo was President of the Federal Competition Commission from 2004 to 2013. In 2012, he was elected President of the International Competition Network, which groups over 130 competition agencies worldwide. Between 2001 and 2004, he was Mexico’s Ambassador to the WTO, and previously he was head of the negotiation of the free trade agreement between Mexico and the European Union in Brussels. He has also been chief of staff to the Minister of Trade and Industry, Director General of Industrial Policy, Director General of International Trade Policy and chief of staff to the Vice Minister for Revenue at the Finance Ministry. He chaired the TRIPS Council and the Negotiating Group on Rules in the WTO and has participated as a chairman in several WTO panels. He holds a BS in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and has undertaken doctoral studies at UCLA.

John Weekes

John Weekes joined Bennett Jones LLP as a senior business adviser in the Ottawa office in 2010. He is an expert in international trade policy, trade agreements, and the settlement of trade disputes. Mr. Weekes provides clients with an insider’s perspective on how governments approach such matters, including the negotiation, implementation and management of trade agreements and trade relations.

He was Canada’s ambassador to the WTO from 1995 to 1999 and chair of the WTO General Council in 1998. From 1991 to 1994 he served as Canada’s chief negotiator for NAFTA, including for the side agreements on environmental and labour co-operation. After the implementation of NAFTA and the creation of the WTO he played a lead role in advising on how to restructure the trade policy functions inside Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to take account of the changed landscape of trade agreements and ensure that Canada derived full benefit from these new agreements. He was ambassador to GATT during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations and served as chair of the GATT Council in 1989 and chair of the Contracting Parties to GATT in 1990. In the 1970s, he participated in the Tokyo Round of GATT negotiations.

For more information on their visit, please contact Stephanie Lis

The International Trade and Competition Unit have published an array of work recently on trade.

Improving Global Financial Services Regulation by Catherine McBride and Shanker Singham – argues that Brexit can improve the UK’s financial services industry

Under Control by Victoria Hewson – outlines what HMRC can do to prepare and optimise customs processes for all outcomes

How the World can benefit from the Network Effects of the Commonwealth by Shanker Singham – explains how Commonwealth countries must work together to remove barriers to economic growth

To see more information about ITCU’s Director Shanker Singham, click here.



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