KPMG continues to build competition practice with new senior hire

Joining the firm from Analysis Group, he will be based in KPMG’s Canary Wharf office. His appointment is the latest in a recent recruitment drive for the practice, which was set up in January 2011 by Nicola Mazzarotto, formerly head of policy analysis at the UK’s Competition Commission.

In little over 2 years, the team has grown to house 20 competition economists. It includes Dr Maria Maher, who joined in February 2014 from AlixPartners, Claudio Calcagno, who previously worked in the chief economist's team at DG Competition and Jenny Burrage, who joined in 2012 having spent nine years at RBB Economics.

Josh White joins the team, bringing more than 10 years experience as an economic consultant, most recently as a Senior Economist at Analysis Group in Montreal, where he specialised in applying microeconomics and econometric modelling techniques to address complex litigation and competition questions. His primary focus revolved around the financial services and technology sectors.

He has extensive experience in the extraction, handling and analysis of big data, as well as in the design and implementation of cutting-edge econometric techniques. He has applied these skills in a variety of contexts, ranging from quantifying antitrust damages to estimating ex-ante default probabilities for structured investment vehicles. White holds an MA in Economics from the University of British Columbia and a BA in Socio-political Economics from Boston University.

“I am very excited to be joining KPMG’s rapidly growing team of competition economists,” he says. “The use of big data and demand for ever more advanced econometric techniques in competition investigations and follow-on antitrust damages cases continues to grow, and this is a great opportunity for KPMG to continue to be a market leader in these highly quantitative fields.”

KPMG’s competition economics practice sits within the wider forensic group, and White says that this puts the company in the “unique position” of being able to “jointly harness the skills of colleagues who are experts in forensic accounting, data analytics, competition economics and econometrics, to help our clients through an increasingly complex competition and regulatory landscape.”

Nicola Mazzarotto adds: “We are delighted to welcome Josh to the team. He is an experienced econometrician and competition economist, and he brings additional experience in the areas of modelling and quantitative techniques, which are core components of KPMG’s competition economics practice.”