Practice
Competition & Antitrust
The Antitrust and Competition laws are designed to ensure competitive markets and prevent companies from gaining too much power. These laws regulate unethical conduct by businesses, such as predatory pricing or cartel formation. The Antitrust and Competition practice at Nodia, Urumashvili and Partners assists clients in navigating domestic and international regulatory regimes, providing practical advice to help clients achieve their business goals while anticipating and addressing potential competition issues. We advise you in negotiating mergers and acquisitions and in structuring joint ventures and other arrangements with potential antitrust dimensions
What We Do:
Antitrust Compliance and Advisory: Advising businesses on compliance with competition law governed by Georgian National Competition Agency. Offering guidance on how to avoid anti-competitive practices such as price-fixing, market sharing. Ensuring that business activities like pricing strategies, exclusive agreements, and distribution channels comply with Georgian and, where applicable, EU competition rules.
Merger Control and Approval: Assisting with the legal processes surrounding mergers and acquisition, ensuring they are in compliance with the GNCA’s merger control regulations. Helping clients navigate the pre-merger notification process and advising on whether the merger will require GNCA approval.
Assistance during investigations: Our firm’s attorneys represent clients in cartel investigations and offer legal defense services for businesses accused of anti-competitive practices, such as price-fixing, bid-rigging, or other anti-competitive agreements.
Assistance in litigation: Representing clients in competition-related disputes, both in national courts and in proceedings before the Georgian National Competition Agency.
Negotiation: of clearance for acquisitions, mergers and joint ventures.
Advice: on structures of commercial and cooperation agreements, cross-border trade and anti-dumping measures.
Vakhtang Gamtsemlidze rejoined Nodia, Urumashvili & Partners in 2017. Prior to rejoining the firm, he served as Head of Legal, External Affairs, and Security at British American Tobacco from 2009, overseeing commercial and corporate law, M&A, regulatory issues, compliance, reputation, and security across eight markets in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this role, he effectively led a large team of lawyers across different jurisdictions to meet business objectives.
Before 2009, Vakhtang was a Senior Lawyer at Nodia, Urumashvili & Partners, and served as an Arbitrator at the Dispute Resolution Center while providing legal advice to various businesses in Georgia.
Areas of Practice
• Commercial, Corporate, and M&A
• Intellectual Property
• Employment
Education
• Utrecht University: LLM (2007)
• Tbilisi State University: Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Law (2003)
Languages
• Georgian
• English
• Russian
Tamta Margvelashvili joined Nodia, Urumashvili & Partners in 2019 as an Associate, advancing to Senior Associate, and later to her current role as Director of Competition, Capital & Financial Markets Practice. She specializes in competition law, financial and capital markets law, data privacy, corporate and M&A, contract law, ADR, and litigation. Tamta advises on cross-border regulatory matters, competition enforcement, and financial and capital market compliance, offering strategic counsel to both domestic and international clients. She is actively involved in national law-drafting initiatives and is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences. Her expertise is reflected in multiple publications on competition and digitalization.
Beyond private practice, Tamta is actively involved in Academia. She holds a position of an Associate Professor at Georgian National University and an invited lecturer at Ilia State University and Tbilisi State University.
Areas of Practice:
• Competition Law
• Banking, Financial & Capital Markets Law
• Corporate & M&A
• Data Privacy Law
• Insolvency & Restructuring
• ADR and Litigation
Education:
• PhD Candidate, Competition Law – Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia (2019 – Present)
• Research Fellow at Institute for German and European Economic, Competition & Regulatory Law – Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2022-2023)
• Master of Laws (LL.M) in International & European Law (Business Track) – KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (2018-2019)
• Exchange LL.B. Program – Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (2017–2018)
• Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia (2014-2018)
Bar Admission:
• Member of the Georgian Bar Association
Languages:
• Georgian (Native)
• English (Fluent)
• German (Fluent)
• Russian (Fluent)
