Helen Weeds

Dr Helen Weeds is a Senior Consultant to the European Competition Practice of Charles River Associates.

Helen has over 25 years’ experience in competition policy, providing economic analysis and advice in competition, merger and regulatory investigations in the UK, EU, Canada, South Africa and other jurisdictions. Her main focus is on the communications, digital and financial sectors. She has particular expertise in relation to vertical mergers and abuse of market power, including allegations of vertical foreclosure, exclusionary behaviour and margin squeeze. Major investigations include Virgin/O2, NENT/Telenor/JV, Vodafone/Certain Liberty Global assets, Liberty Global/De Vijver Media, Altice/Media Capital, Disney/Fox, 21st Century Fox/Sky, BT/EE, BSkyB’s wholesaling of Sky Sports, UK Competition Commission’s Movies on Pay TV market investigation and regulation of mobile termination. Helen has also advised on wider public policy issues including media plurality, public service broadcasting, spectrum pricing, infrastructure investment and financial issues in regulation.

From 2021-2024 Helen was Senior Advisor at the Payment Systems Regulator. In this role she sat on the PSR’s Executive Committee and provided expert input into its market reviews, policy projects and strategy development. She was a member of the Competition and Markets Authority’s Academic Advisory Panel from 2016-2020. In 2018-2019 she was a member of the National Infrastructure Commission’s Challenge Panel on regulation and strategic investment, and in 2016-2017 she acted as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. She was previously Chief Economist at Ofcom, where she sat on the Policy Executive, led the economic input into Ofcom’s strategic reviews and peer-reviewed economic analysis across Ofcom.

Helen is an affiliate of the Centre for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia and a Member of the Centre for Competition and Regulatory Policy at City St George’s, University of London. She earned her doctorate in Economics from the University of Oxford and held academic appointments at Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick and Essex universities, and visiting positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University.