Dr. Maxim Kleine advises both domestic and international clients in German and European antitrust matters. His focus is representing clients in antitrust investigations before the German Federal Cartel Office, the European Commission, respective competent courts and other national antitrust authorities. Furthermore, Maxim advises clients how to structure and set up distribution systems in accordance with European antitrust legislation. He also advises competitors in co-operation projects in compliance with EU antitrust legislation and represents clients in merger control proceedings.

Besides, Maxim has comprehensive experience in defending clients against antitrust follow-on damage claims by customers in court and before arbitration tribunals. In this respect, Maxim achieved a number of benchmark decisions in favour of his clients before the German Federal Court of Justice. In one of these decisions, the German Federal Supreme Court ruled that courts may not apply a rule of prima facie evidence that cartels regularly create damages. Furthermore, Maxim regularly advises clients in merger control proceedings both before the German Federal Cartel Office and before the European Commission.

In recent years, Maxim represented clients in various antitrust investigations both by the European Commission and the German Federal Cartel Offices (and other national antitrust authorities), covering a wide range of industries as railway infrastructure, turnouts, power plants, beer, wall paper, steel, automotive suppliers, contact lenses and insulation material. 

Dr. Maxim Kleine is partner at GÖRG Partnerschaft von Rechtsanwälten mbB. Before joining GÖRG, Maxim has built up, lead, and developed the German antitrust practice of an international law firm from its Hamburg office. Before, Maxim headed the antitrust practice of another independent leading German law firm in Cologne.
After his studies of law at the University of Göttingen and the University of Leuven (Belgium), Dr. Maxim Kleine wrote his phd thesis in public international, European and German constitutional law at the chair of Prof. Dr. Georg Nolte at the Institute for Public International Law at the University of Göttingen. After his time as research assistant at the Institute for Public International Law at the Universtity of Göttingen, Maxim spend his legal traineeship (Referendariat) at the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg with trainings in International law firms in Hamburg and Brussels, and at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium.

Maxim was admitted to court in Germany in 2006 after returning from Brussels.

• Studienvereinigung Kartellrecht
• Competition Litigation Society
• ABA Antirust Section
• Who’s Who Legal Competition 2020
• Who’s Who Legal Germany 2020
• Wirtschaftswoche
• Kanzleimonitor
• Juve

• Maxim regularly publishes on antitrust law matters and is co-editor of the leading German newsservices “Newsdienst Compliance" published by Beck-Verlag, Munich.