People

People

WTI Advisors is built on a core team of experienced trade professionals, complemented by specialized consultants.

Consultants

  • Dr. Lorand Bartels

    is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Law and a Fellow of Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge, where he teaches and writes on public international law, WTO law, the law of regional trade agreements and EU law. Dr Bartels is a member of the Executive Council of the Society of International Economic Law and of the ILA's International Trade Law Committee. He is a General Editor of the series Cambridge International Trade and Economic Law, an Associate Editor of the Journal of World Trade and an Editorial Board member of the Journal of International Economic Law and the Revista de Derecho Económico Internacional. Dr Bartels has extensive experience as consultant to governments, international organizations, NGOs, and the private sector on a range of international law issues, with a specialty in trade, human rights, dispute settlement, and regional integration. He is a national of Australia, where he originates, and the Netherlands and speaks English and German, as well as some Spanish.

  • Lambert Botha, LLM, M.I.L.E

    is a director at Trade Law Chambers, South Africa and an admitted attorney with practice experience in the areas of public international law, intellectual property and international economic law. As trade practitioner his areas of practice include regional dispute settlement, agricultural trade, services trade, TRIPS, WTO dispute settlement; SPS, regional trade agreements and trade in energy goods and services. Energy trade is his special interest and he serves in his personal capacity on the World Energy Council Task Team on Trade in Energy Goods and Services. Lambert regularly teaches at South African universities in the area WTO law. He speaks English in addition to his native language Afrikaans. He is a keen mountain biker and enjoys good wine without necessarily debating the importance of GI - protection.

  • Prof. Thomas Cottier

    Managing Director of the WTI, Professor of European and International Economic Law and Director of the Institute of European and International Economic Law at the University of Berne. A former Head of Legal Services of the GATT Division, Swiss Department of Foreign Economic Relations, Deputy DG at the Swiss Federal Intellectual Property Office, member of various WTO/GATT dispute settlement panels and Swiss negotiator at the GATT Uruguay Round and on EEA negotiations, he is one of the key authorities on international trade and WTO law.

  • Rian Geldenhuys, LL.M. MBA

    is a director at Trade Law Chambers. As a trade lawyer and commercial attorney he advises clients on all legal matters relating to trade in goods, services and investment whether in the international or domestic markets. Rian has specific interests in customs issues, trade remedies (such as anti-dumping duties and subsidies), trade in services (especially the establishment of businesses in foreign jurisdictions), competition law and investments. Rian lectures on the international business environment on all of the University of Stellenbosch’s MBA programmes and regularly lectures on the same topic at Universities throughout South Africa.  He is a member of the Cape Law Society, Business Unity South Africa’s Trade Policy Committee and the Law Society of South Africa’s GATS Committee. 

  • Niel Joubert, LL.M., M.I.L.E.,

    a director with Trade Law Chambers, is an international trade, corporate and commercial lawyer with experience in the fields of dispute settlement, trade remedies, regional trade agreements as well as the commercial aspects of transactions involving cross border trade and investment. Before joining Trade Law Chambers Niel spent two years with Bowman Gilfillan, one of the biggest commercial law firms in South Africa. Prior to that he obtained first hand experience in WTO dispute settlement working on a number of WTO disputes as a Legal Affairs Officer in the WTO’s Legal Affairs Division. Niel has also served as a researcher with a Southern African trade capacity building centre for a number of years. Niel is a member of the Cape Law Society and serves on the Executive Committee of the Exporters Club of South Africa. He retains an academic interest in trade matters serving as a lecturer on International Payment Systems and International Trade Law on the LLM programmes of the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Niel speaks English, Afrikaans, German and some Dutch.

  • Sufian Jusoh, LL.M

    is a Barrister (England and Wales) and a Research Fellow with the NCCR Project at the WTI in Berne. He is based in Kuala Lumpur and Berne. Sufian has more than a decade’s experience in legal practice. His areas of specialization are IP law, franchising, international environmental law and laws relating to technology. Sufian was the legal advisor to a Malaysian Government science park where he advised on technology and the law, venture capital investment and patents in agriculture biotechnology. Sufian was also the legal advisor to the Malaysian Malay Chamber of Commerce and Labuan Liberty Port in East Malaysia. He also advised various interest groups in the formulation of the Malaysian Long Term Plan 2000–2010. Sufian speaks Malay and English.

  • Prof. Dr. Markus Krajewski

    is professor of public and international law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) and a visiting professor at the World Trade Institute (WTI) in Berne. Previously he held positions at the universities of Bremen and Potsdam and at King's College London. His research interests include international and European law, in particular WTO law, trade in services, regional trade agreements (FTAs, Customs Unions), international investment law, and external relations of the EU. He is a regular consultant on WTO & international trade law for governmental institutions and non-governmental organisations. In 2009/2010 he was team leader of a pioneering WTI Advisors project under TradeCom on capacity building at the Faculty of Law of Addis Ababa University (and other Ethiopian universities) in support of Ethiopia's accession to the WTO. Since 2011 he is a member of the Committee on International Trade Law of the International Law Association (ILA). Apart from his native German Markus works in English and (to a lesser degree) French.

  • Dr. Christian Pitschas, LL.M.

    is a partner at MSBH Rechtsanwälte and a co-founder and former Director of WTI Advisors. Christian advises and represents clients on all matters relating to trade in goods and services, in particular in the areas of agriculture, SPS, TBT, NTBs, trade facilitation, subsidies, government procurement and dispute settlement, as well as EU law and public international law. Christian has fifteen years of professional experience, including positions as a trade lawyer with a major international law firm in Brussels, lecturer in EU and public international law at the Free University of Berlin and clerk with the Court of Appeals in Berlin. Christian regularly lectures at the WTI in Berne as well as the Europe-Institute of the University of Saarland and sits on the advisory board of the Centre for Foreign Trade Law in Münster. He frequently publishes on issues of international and EU trade law and policy. He speaks English and French in addition to his native German.

  • Dr. Luca Rubini

    is lecturer and deputy director of the Institute of European Law at the School of Law of the University of Birmingham. He is also a faculty member of the WTI (Berne) and of the ASERI (Milan). He has held visiting positions at the Institute of International Economic Law (Georgetown University), King’s College London and the European University Institute. Previously, he was lecturer at the University of Leicester and legal clerk to Advocate General Francis Jacobs at the European Court of Justice. Dr Rubini has acted as consultant in relation to trade and competition issues in the past and has worked with various NGOs. He teaches and does research in the areas of WTO law, competition law and EU law and has a particular expertise in the regulation of subsidies, having published among other things the Definition of Subsidy and State Aid: WTO and EC Law in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2009). His recent research has focused on climate change issues. In this regard, he is currently working on a major project on a new WTO discipline for ‘green’ subsidies. He speaks English and Italian and has some knowledge of French.

  • Pierre Sauvé

    Deputy Managing Director and Director of Studies of the WTI and visiting lecturer at several academic institutions, including the LSE, the College of Europe and the University of Barcelona Law School, whose LLM programme in International Economic Law and Policy he co-directs. He is a Senior Fellow of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. Pierre served as Canada’s services negotiator on NAFTA and was a staff member at the BIS, the GATT and the OECD. In 2007, he was a member of the Warwick Commission on the future of the multilateral trading system. His research and practice focus is on the evolution of rule-making for services trade and investment and the impact that regional integration exerts on the MTS.

  • Dr. Christina Schröder, LL.M.

    was a Senior Counsellor in the Agriculture Division of the WTO (GATT) Secretariat when she left the institution after 33 years of service. She served inter alia as Legal Advisor / Panel Secretary on cases such as EC-Bananas, Korea-Beef and EC-Sugar. She now advises developing countries on issues related to trade in agriculture and fisheries, including the DDA negotiations on agriculture. She speaks Swedish, English, French and some Spanish and German.

  • Anirudh Singhal, PhD, M.I.L.E.

    is a Senior Research Fellow at the World Trade Institute, University of Bern, Co-leader of the NCCR's work programme on the impact assessment of trade and part of the faculty on the MILE Programme.  A PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex, Anirudh specialises in International Economics, Econometrics and Development. He has worked in international trade for close to eight years including at the WTO and the World Bank and has conducted specific research on trade in services, government procurement, preferential trade agreements, LDC market access, trade defence, trade facilitation, competition policy, trade in agriculture, SPS issues and trade and climate change. He has also published in these areas in academic journals and for the World Bank, the WTO, the European Commission, UNCTAD and the Commonwealth Secretariat. He is also affiliated with the Centre for the Analysis of Regional Integration at Sussex (CARIS) and has co-authored several reports on the impact of preferential trade agreements on excluded and partner countries. Anirudh graduated 'summa cum laude' from the MILE Program at the WTI and also holds a Masters degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics. His undergraduate degree was in Economics (Honors) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

  • Peter Tulloch, M.A.

    is a former Director of the Development and Trade Policy Review Divisions at the WTO (and formerly GATT) Secretariat. He is an economist by background, with 26 years of broad and in-depth experience at the Secretariat, including work on balance of payment issues, macro-economic policies, textiles and technical assistance as well as TPR and relations with developing countries. He has spent the past five years as a consultant on WTO issues for developing countries. Apart from his native English, Peter is fluent in French and reads Spanish.

  • Hilton Zunckel, M.I.L.E.

    is a founding partner of Trade Law Chambers in Cape Town, South Africa. His areas of expertise include agriculture, trade remedies, accessions, services and African regional trade issues. Hilton served as the Assistant Executive Director to a leading South African trade association where he formed part of South Africa’s representation to the WTO Committee on Agriculture, the International Grains Council, the International Food Aid Convention and Southern African Customs Union  negotiating forums. He has also been a senior trade advisor to the law firm Floor Inc. Attorneys and a senior researcher with regional trade capacity building centre. He has acted as co-counsel to the African Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP) and the West African cotton initiative (C4) in the Doha negotiations and his firm was involved in an advisory role on South Africa’s first outing in WTO dispute settlement. He is listed on the roster of WTO panellists. Hilton lectures at several Southern African universities and publishes regularly on trade issues. He is an avid consumer of agricultural products.