Nicola Th
eron is the managing director of Econex and heads the Competition Practice. She is also an Extraordinary Senior Lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch where she teaches courses in competition economics. She holds a Masters degree in Economics cum laude from the University of Pretoria, and a PhD (Economics) from the University of Stellenbosch.
Dr. Theron has been involved right from the start with the new competition dispensation in South Africa. She was the expert economist for the first large merger handled by the competition authorities at the end of 1999 (Santam and Guardian National Insurance). Since then, she has provided expert witness and numerous economic reports for various large clients in proceedings before the Competition Commission and the Competition Tribunal. She also previously served as a part-time member of the Competition Tribunal.
Dr. Theron has also worked in other regulatory fields, such as health, energy and telecommunications. She was involved as an economist in the regulatory battle around the new medicine pricing regulations. More recently, Dr. Theron was involved in a project aimed at providing cost estimates for the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme. In the telecommunications field she has been involved in abuse of dominance complaints, and prepared submissions before ICASA on behalf of a variety of clients. She has also advised some of the telecommunications companies on compliance issues relating to the Competition Act. In the energy sector, Dr. Theron has testified before NERSA in the recent issue around pipeline tariffs in the petroleum sector.
Dr. Theron has given lectures and read papers on the economics of competition policy to numerous, students, academics, research institutions and at local and international conferences. Contact Dr. Nicola Theron at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .