Cento is founder and Managing Partner of Case Associates, IEA Law & Economics Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Buckingham.

Since 2006 the Global Competition Review survey has voted Cento one of the most ‘highly regarded’ competition economists. He has over 40 years’ experience assisting lawyers and companies in responding to investigations by the European Commission, national competition authorities, national regulatory authorities, and in court proceedings in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Cento was also adviser to the Microsoft Monitoring Trustee on the pricing of protocols under commitments set out in the EC Microsoft 2004 decision.

Cento regularly acts as an expert witness in competition law, commercial and damages litigation. He has been an expert witness in courts and tribunals in the UK, Ireland,  the Netherlands, Finland, Lithuania, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and the International Court of Arbitration. 

Cento has appeared as an expert for claimants in several high profile antitrust actions such as Crehan, UK actions against members of the ‘international vitamins’ cartel’ (Deans/BCL, Devenish, Moy Park, Grampian/Vion), the first major UK collective action (Merricks v MasterCard); and Clear v Telecom New Zealand. He has experience in the transport, airports, automotive, energy, water, postal, property, payment systems, financial, commodities, insurance, medical, paint, sport, tax, packaging, electronics, and communications and media sectors.

Cento has assisted with clearance of some of the world’s largest mergers including Carnival/P&O Princess Cruises, MCI/WorldCom, Vodafone/Manessmann, Seagrams/Polygram, AOL/Time Warner, Telia/Telenor, and Telia/Sonera.

Cento has degrees in economics and law (BEc (Hons), MEc, DPhil) and is an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (ACIArb). After a short period at the Australian Federal Department of the Treasury, Cento  was a Commonwealth Scholar and then research fellow at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University. He has held academic positions in UK, US, Canadian and Australian universities; and was the Research Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an influential economics think tank. He has published extensively on the economics of competition, regulation and law, and was on the editorial board of the UK Competition Law Reports. Cento’s ‘groundbreaking’ practitioners book Cartel Damages – Principles, measurement and economics published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

For recent research by Cento go to SSRN Website