IIC Italy Chapter Webinar: Competition in Digital Markets Series – Big Data, Pluralism and Fake News

President of the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM), the communications regulator in Italy, since 2012, Professor Angelo Marcello Cardani was appointed by Prime Minister Mario Monti.

Professor Cardani has had a long academic career, which includes tenure at Università Bocconi from 1985 to 2012. In his non-academic career, he was Special Advisor to the Chief Competition Economist at DG Competition between 2004 and 2005, and prior to that he served as Deputy Head of Cabinet of Mario Monti, when he was European Commissioner for Competition Policy (1999-2004). He served as a member of the Cabinet of Mario Monti, the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Financial Services, and Taxation (1995 -1999), and was Director General and Board Member of the International Management Institute of St. Petersburg (IMISP) from 1989 to 1995.

The author of numerous academic papers on management and economics topics, Professor has a degree in Economics from Università Bocconi and completed his studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Antonio Nicita is a Professor  of Economic Policy at Lumsa University, Italy.

Professor Nicita was previously Commissioner of the Italian regulatory authority (AGCOM) until October 2020.  He has also been Associate Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Siena and Visiting Fulbright Professor at Yale University. From 2005-06 he was a Non- Governmental Adviser to the International Competition Network (ICN) for the report on telecommunications sector. From 2006-07 he was an economic adviser to the Italian Minister of Communications and member of the Governmental Unit for the Improvement of Regulation. He was Economic Adviser for the 2009 OECD Regulatory Report on Italy.

Professor Nicita is a member of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, European Commission, as well as the Board of Directors of the Italian Society of Law and Economics, European Association of Law and Economics and of the International Society for New Institutional Economics (ISNIE).

He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Siena, Italy. His research interests cover industrial organisation, law and economics, competition economics and regulation.

Augusto Preta is a consultant, economist and market analyst, with long-established experience in the field of content media and digital markets. As Founder and CEO at ITMedia Consulting, he has assisted and advised for almost 30 years, public institutions, authorities and major companies in media, telecommunications and the internet industries.

Mr Preta is Member of the SIE (Società Italiana degli Economisti).  He has been a visiting professor on Media Economics at Urbino University, Sassari University e Università Cattolica di Milano for almost 20 years, and has been involved in many research projects, writing influential papers and cooperating with organisations such as: Aspen Institute, European Law and Economics Society, Luigi Einaudi Foundation. He is author of “Economia dei contenuti” (2008) and “TV and relevant markets” (2013). He co-authored with Gerard Pogorel the Fondation Robert Schuman research report  “Convergence in Media and Telecom in face of Covid-19” (2020).

Mr Preta is President of the Italian Chapter.

Gabriella Muscolo has been a Commissioner at the Italian Competition Authority in May 2014.

Appointed as a Judge in 1985, she sat at the Specialist Section for Intellectual Property and Competition Law in the District Court of Rome and at the Court for Undertakings in Rome.

Commissioner Muscolo was appointed as a member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal-EBA of the European Patent Office-EPO from 2009 to 2014.  She has been a Fellow of the Centre of European Law of King’s College London, since 2018.

Since 2019, Commissioner Muscolo has been a member of the Board of Trustees of ERA (Academy of European Law) and of the Advisory Board of the ERA Forum (Journal of the Academy of European Law).
Since 2008, she has been a lecturer of Company Law at the School of Specialisation for Legal Professionals at the University of Rome – La Sapienza.

Commissioner Muscolo has lectured at Italian and foreign Universities such as Université de Strasbourg, CEIPI-Centre d’Étude International de la Propriété Intellectuelle, Technische Universitat Dresden, Universidad de Alicante, Queen Mary University, University of Washington, CASRIP- Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Seattle and Waseda University in Tokio.

Commissioner Muscolo publishes in Italian and English in the fields of Intellectual Property and Competition Law. She co-edited the volumes “Intellectual Property and Competition Law: a European perspective”, “The Pharmaceutical Sector Between Patent Law and Competition Law. An International Perspective” and “The Interplay Between Competition Law and Intellectual Property: An International Perspective”.

Michael Cosgrave is Executive General Manager of the Infrastructure Regulation Division at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

The ACCC is the economy wide competition regulator that has specific responsibilities in the economic and competition regulation of telecommunications and some other key infrastructure sectors. In this role it investigates allegations of breaches of competition and consumer law, and undertakes merger reviews in the telecommunications sector. Additionally it has specific responsibilities in relations to telecommunications, administering industry specific access and economic regulation rules which include the determination of the terms and conditions on which the National Broadband Network supplies its customers.

Mr Cosgrave has been the most senior official within the ACCC on telecommunications for the past 20 years

Mr Cosgrave’s current position involves the overall management of the ACCC’s Infrastructure Regulation Division, which is responsible for fostering competitive, efficient and informed markets in critical sectors and industries. This includes the economic regulation of certain communications, water and transport markets and the monitoring of industries where there is lack of competition such as fuel and airports.

Mr Cosgrave is a lawyer who has worked both as a barrister and as a solicitor across a range of areas in both the private and public sectors.