Gina Cass-Gottleib of Gilbert+Tobin to be ACCC’s first chairwoman

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will get its first chairwoman in top Sydney lawyer Gina Cass-Gottleib.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will get its first chairwoman in top Sydney lawyer Gina Cass-Gottleib.

The nomination of Ms Cass-Gottleib — who established Gilbert+Tobin’s competition practice in the 1990s — was announced by Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on Tuesday.

“During her distinguished career in legal practice, she has advised on some of the largest and most complex competition matters in Australia and New Zealand,” Mr Frydenberg said.

Incoming ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Provided her appointment is approved by the states and territories, Ms Cass-Gottleib will start in March, replacing economist Rod Sims, who has been in the job since 2011.

Gilbert+Tobin said Ms Cass-Gottleib was unavailable for comment.

Mr Sims said Ms Cass-Gottleib was “extremely well qualified” and a “lovely person”.

Mr Sims had been due to depart at the end of July. But the likely timing of the next federal election forced the move to happen sooner.

“I don’t think Gina can be the chair in waiting for eight months,” Mr Sims told The Daily Telegraph. “This facilitates a really good, orderly transition.”

Graeme Samuel — who tried to bring Ms Cass-Gottleib to the ACCC as a commissioner in 2008 when he was chairman — said she would be an “outstanding appointment”.

Mr Samuel told The Daily Telegraph he tried “every trick in the book” to get Ms Cass-Gottleib to join the regulator.

“I could see her as being a future chair of the ACCC,” he said.

But, he added, Ms Cass-Gottleib had a young family at the time and decided that had to come first.

“I’m absolutely delighted,” Mr Samuel said, who described Ms Cass-Gottleib as calm, conscientious and of “unblemished integrity”.

Ms Cass-Gottleib has been described as having “unblemished integrity”. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Ms Cass-Gottleib’s father was renowned orthopaedic surgeon Dr Cecil Cass and her sociologist mother, Bettina Cass, is an emeritus professor of both UNSW and the University of Sydney.

Her uncle, Moss Cass, was Federal Minister for the Environment, and then Media, in the Whitlam Labor government.

In her youth, Ms Cass-Gottleib was captain of the Australian schools debating team. She studied bachelor degrees in commerce and law at the University of Sydney and a Masters of Laws at University of California, Berkeley.

More recently, she advised investment bank JP Morgan ahead of its decision to become an immunity witness for the ACCC in the regulator’s ongoing criminal cartel case against Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.

Mr Samuel noted the ACCC’s difficulty winning court cases to stop mergers it considered anti-competitive.

The appointment of Ms Cass-Gottleib could lead to a change in the cases the regulator chooses to prosecute.

But Mr Sims defended the ACCC’s record on mergers.

While it hadn’t won a case, Mr Sims said it had done the right thing in bringing the actions, and it was stopping or altering at least 10 major tie-ups annually by publicly opposing them.