Tom Robinson

Tom has advised clients and provided expert evidence in a wide range of contexts and across a variety of industries. Some examples of matters he has worked on include:

• Acted as an expert in a UK consumer rights act claim at the Competition Appeals Tribunal relating to the vehicle shipping industry. Tom provided expert reports and gave oral evidence in this landmark case under the Consumer Rights Act.
• Worked with academics and traders to develop a model for estimating damages arising from coordinated FX market manipulation. This project resulted in a UK consumer rights act claim at the Competition Appeals Tribunal.
• Provided economic analysis around the impact of the potential failure of a large construction business on the public purse and the economy more generally.
• Analyzing and presenting financial information in an advisory capacity for an EU rail company which believed it had been subjected to excessive charging for network access by its infrastructure provider.
• Acted for insurance companies, working with large amounts of data to design and construct various bespoke financial models with the purpose of quantifying claims and insured amounts (given policy interpretations) associated with various mass tort and product recall insured events.
• Assisted lawyers in negotiations relating to damages arising from the cartel for refrigeration compressors. This included preparing the lawyers for mediation of the damages claim between their client and the cartelists.
• Calculated cost of capital for the purposes of valuing an airline in a case being heard at International Arbitration regarding the damages arising from the expropriation of the business’ assets.
• Calculated cost of capital for the valuation of a telecoms company in sub-Saharan Africa for the purposes of calculating damages arising from a contractual dispute under International Arbitration.
• Undertook a valuation of a hotel in a sub-Saharan African city under various scenarios. The hotel was the subject of a dispute between investors in a joint venture being heard at International Arbitration.
• Collected data and built a top-down model of Northern Cypriot public revenues from the telecoms industry under various liberalization scenarios. This involved modeling the revenues and costs of the state-owned telecoms company (the starting point for which was the incumbent’s accounting data) and the growth in the size and competition of the telecoms market once liberalized.
• Undertook a study for a competitive provider of telecoms on the incumbent firm’s model supporting local loop prices. Tom assisted in responding to the regulator’s consultation document on their telecoms charge control and provided calculations used in various expert reports submitted to the Competition Appeals Tribunal. This included an analysis of the incumbent’s activity based costing model.
• Provided calculations for a competitive telecoms provider on the regulator’s Leased Lines Charge Control in their case against the regulator at the Competition Appeals Tribunal. This included working on and reviewing both the incumbent’s and the regulator’s models used to calculate profitability and the ‘X’ factor in the RPI – X charge control for leased lines. Significant changes to the price glide path and ‘X’ factor were subsequently made by the regulator.
• Built various modeling calculations looking at wholesale overcharging in the UK telecoms industry. These calculations began with the various cost standards published in the incumbent’s Regulatory Financial Statements, to which a series of adjustments were made. Subsequently, the incumbent’s cost orientation obligation was tested by comparing these cost figures with the prices charged for their services. We found that the prices being charged breached the incumbent’s cost orientation obligation and the regulator found that the resulting overcharges were to be repaid.