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Sanna Syrjälä

Senior Counsel

Biography

Sanna is a Senior Counsel at Geradin Partners. She has 20 years of experience in EU and Finnish competition law, with a particular focus on merger control, abuse of dominance and complex antitrust assessments.

Prior to joining Geradin Partners, Sanna spent her career at the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (FCCA), where she most recently served as Director of Mergers. In that role, she led numerous high-profile Phase II merger investigations and supervised hundreds of merger cases across a wide range of sectors, including digital markets and infrastructure, banking, retail, healthcare, food and agriculture. She has extensive hands-on experience in assessing a broad range of theories of harm, as well as remedies and procedural strategy.

Sanna also has extensive experience in antitrust enforcement. She has led complex and high-profile investigations concerning abuse of dominance, cartels and other antitrust matters, and has substantial litigation experience. She has led several major competition-law proceedings before the Finnish Market Court and the Supreme Administrative Court. Alongside her case work, Sanna has held senior management roles at the FCCA, including as a member of the Competition Department’s Board of Directors and as Deputy Director General for Competition.

In addition to public enforcement work, Sanna has in-depth experience in legislative and policy matters. Most recently, she led the reform of Finnish merger control legislation and was responsible for the revision of the FCCA’s merger guidance. She has also driven several merger policy initiatives and contributed actively to EU-level regulatory work.

Sanna regularly speaks at international conferences and contributes to Nordic and EU competition-law discussion.

Experience

  • Senior Counsel, Geradin Partners, 2026–
  • Director of Mergers, Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (FCCA), 2017–2025
  • Head of Research (Antitrust), Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (FCCA), 2010–2016
  • Senior Competition Specialist, Finnish Competition Authority (FCA), 2006–2010

Education

  • Master of Laws, University of Helsinki, 2006
  • Master of Arts, Economics for Competition Law, King’s College London, 2015

Languages

Finnish, English, Swedish

Publications and speaking engagements

  • Policy Options for Regulating Private Equity Involvement in Health Care, Health Policy, Volume 156, 2025 (with M. Tracey et al.).
  • Study on the Competitive Landscape of Veterinary Services and the Effects of Market Concentration, Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority Reviews 6/2024, 2024 (with A. Jankari et al.) (in Finnish).
  • Assessment of Reform Options for Finnish Merger Control Notification Thresholds, Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority Reports 7/2021, 2021 (with R. Buri et al.) (in Finnish).
  • Data and Methodologies in Modern Merger Control, in From a Competition Authority to a Market Authority – A Book in Honour of Juhani Jokinen, 2018 (with O. Kauppi) (in Finnish).

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