Bryan A. San Juan

Mr. Bryan A. San Juan, Founding Dean and Law Professor and a distinguished Oxford Law alumnus, is a Senior Partner and Head of the Antitrust and Competition Law Practice of the Firm. He co-heads other Commercial Law practice areas including Energy and Power Utilities; Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A); Foreign Investments, Public-Private Partnership/Procurement Laws; Financial Technology and E-Commerce; ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance); Banking and Financial Laws, Mining and Natural Resources; Climate Change; Intellectual Property and General Commercial Laws.

Admitted as a Senior Partner in December 2020, Mr. San Juan’s rise to the ranks of the Philippines’ top lawyers has been nothing short of phenomenal. For two consecutive years now (2023 and 2024), Mr. San Juan has been named in the Asia Business Law Journal’s (“ABLJ”) List of Top 100 Lawyers in the Philippines. From 2024-2025, the Legal 500 Asia Pacific named him as a Recommended Lawyer in the fields of Antitrust & Competition Law and Corporate M&As. He is also in the IFLR 1000 2024/2025 for his notable work in the corporate field, including M&As. Furthermore, in recognition of the profound impact of Mr. San Juan’s work in ESG, Climate Change, and Renewable Energy, he made history as the British Council Philippines’ first National Winner for Science and Sustainability in the inaugural launch of the Study UK Alumni Awards in the Philippines last February 2024.

Mr. San Juan has two law degrees from world-class legal institutions. He finished his Juris Doctor at the University of the Philippines College of Law (“UP Law”) with distinction as Class Valedictorian and Cum Laude. In UP Law, he received the highest number of academic awards, including the ACCRA Law Medal for Excellence in Law, the Dean’s Medal for Academic Excellence, the UP Law Class of 1972 Award for Academic Excellence, and the prestigious Gonzalo W. Gonzalez Award for outstanding legal services to the poor. Consistently ranking first in his UP Law batch, he was elected Chancellor of the Order of the Purple Feather (the honor society of UP Law) from 2009-2010, and the Vice-Chancellor from 2008-2009.

In 2019, Mr. San Juan read law, Magister Juris (“MJur”), the civil law equivalent of the world-renowned Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) Program, at the University of Oxford, where he was admitted as a joint scholar of Oxford Faculty of Law and Hertford College. He finished his MJur with Academic Merit (Magna Cum Laude equivalent) and was recognized by Hertford College for his Exceptional Academic Performance. Mr. San Juan’s areas of concentration in Oxford included competition laws of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States under the guidance of intellectual giants in Antitrust Law, namely Prof. Ariel Ezrachi; Mr. Aidan Robertson (King’s Counsel); and Judge Simon Holmes of the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal. While in Oxford, he also extensively trained at the Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy, where he was heavily exposed to special issues in EU and UK competition laws. Fully sponsored by Hertford College, he was also sent to the European Court of Justice and the General Courts of the European Union in Luxembourg, where he had a chance to attend oral arguments on competition law issues.

As the first National Winner for Science and Sustainability, Mr. San Juan attended an ESG and Sustainability Leadership Programme at the Cambridge Judge Business School at Cambridge University (UK) last May 2024. Mr. San Juan was the only Filipino in the program, which was attended by government leaders, central bankers, chief executives, and chief sustainability officers of national and global organizations from 16 countries.

As the Head of the Antitrust Practice, Mr. San Juan has a formidable presence across all fields of competition law. On the merger control side, since the enactment of the Philippine Competition Act to the present, he has successfully obtained the approval of the Philippine Competition Commission (“PCC”) on the Phase 1 review of M&As with a collective transaction value now exceeding Php430 Billion. He has extensively advised M&A parties on various aspects of merger control, from drafting their clean team protocols and guidelines to premerger exchange of information, up to proactive preparations such as preparations of structural and behavioral remedies in anticipation of possible competition concerns. He is currently advising and has advised major clients, including conglomerates, on difficult antitrust issues, both on merger control (such as proving a failing firm defense or failing division defense, and defenses based on merger efficiencies) and antitrust enforcement issues. As an Oxford-trained practitioner, Mr. San Juan has given clients in cross-border M&As comparative perspectives on how their contemplated M&A will likely be treated under US and EU competition laws and has worked with international law firms to manage cross-border antitrust issues.

In Antitrust Litigation, he has been involved in a landmark antitrust litigation in the energy sector before the Supreme Court En Banc (SC), where he challenged the constitutionality and validity of a law that effectively granted and assured the dominance of a private distribution utility against incumbent players. Invoking the unfair competition clause in the Constitution, he argued that contrary to the intention of Congress, the law would lead to material distortions to competition in the relevant distribution utilities markets. He also argued before the SC on the centrality of a statutory stranded contract recovery mechanism as an indispensable requirement for the introduction of competition in the distribution utility sector. In the same SC Case, he also defended the validity of the take-or-pay clauses in power supply agreements against the charge that it is anti-competitive in object and effect.

Under Mr. San Juan’s watch, the Antitrust Practice of the Firm was recognized three times in a row in 2024 and 2025 by multiple award-giving bodies. The Legal 500 Asia Pacific recognized SL Law as a top antitrust practitioner. The ABLJ Philippine Law Firm Awards named the Firm as Antitrust and Competition Law Firm of the Year for 2024 and 2025, and featured the key work of the Firm in this practice area. In November 2024, the ALB shortlisted SL Law as one of the Top 5 antitrust advisors in the Philippines.

Mr. San Juan’s most prestigious international engagements include his designation in 2023 as the Philippine Antitrust Expert and Procurement Law Expert by the World Bank Group in its global project to improve business regulatory regimes. He was again designated in 2024 as one of the World Bank Group’s experts in the same fields. Mr. San Juan was also consulted by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) in its review of the Philippine merger control regime. His contributions were acknowledged by the OECD in its October 2023 publication on Philippine merger control.

As Energy Partner, Mr. San Juan’s achievements are equally formidable. With his deep experience in technical power/energy matters, which he brought to the Firm, he not only handles Power M&As and Project financing, but is also involved in heavy technical energy litigation. In November 2023, Project Leyte, a major renewable energy project in the Philippines that Mr. San Juan counseled, was hailed by the Asian Legal Business as the 2023 M&A Deal of the Year. He is now leading the Firm’s advisory work to Trina Solar Group, one of the largest solar energy investors and developers in the country, in the Group’s multiple concurrent projects in the Philippines, Zenith Renewable Energy Corporation, Peak Power, among many others.

In Power Litigation, Atty. San Juan is lead counsel to the top three (3) performing distribution utilities, namely ILECO 1, ILECO 2, and ILECO 3, in handling their landmark constitutional and regulatory litigation before the SC and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). In the ERC, he leads his clients in precedent-setting CPCN applications in a “competitive market” entailing presentation of stranded contract costs, simulation of passing on of DSM/CAPEX charges to consumers in the market of incumbent players, and complex disputes on the implementation of the Alyansa ruling. He is co-lead counsel in many high-value disputes of the Firm’s client generation companies, including arbitration before the Singapore International Court of Arbitration.

As Banking and Financial Laws Partner, he has extensively advised financial conglomerates and banks. He also advised several financing and lending companies in their compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering Act, including the Wolfsberg Principles and crafting their Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Programs that also reflect the Wolfsberg Principles. He has also successfully caused the lifting of freeze orders, or asset protection orders issued against some of the Firm’s clients. Under his watch, the Firm has been listed in 2024 by the Legal 500 as one of the Firms to Watch in Banking. In 2023, the Banking Practice also made it to the Top 5 Best Practice Groups in the ALB Philippine Law Firm Awards.

As Foreign Investments Partner, he has extensively advised several large foreign investors, including a foreign sovereign wealth fund, global funds, one of the world’s largest e-marketplaces, global commodity traders, financing conglomerates (with a portfolio of investments in lending, insurance, financing companies and banks) among others, in compliance with the increasingly complex regulations affecting their target sectors for investment. He has successfully defended one of his clients in a major enforcement action by the SEC.

As ESG Partner, Mr. San Juan supervised the Firm’s most significant engagement in ESG for a major Philippine bank. Under his supervision, the Firm was commended by the Bank for extensively helping it in its ESG Audit and ESG Compliance. Under his watch, the Firm completed for the Bank an ESG Primer, ESG Scorecard, ESG Due Diligence Checklist, ESG Negative List, and Guidelines for the bank’s frontliners to fully implement ESG. For Environment and Climate Change, Mr. San Juan co-leads the Team in the crafting of litigation strategy and drafting of key arguments for the Firm’s client non-government organizations/people’s organizations.

Mr. San Juan is a leading figure in the Firm’s high-stakes commercial and environmental litigation. Known for his formidable command of Civil Law, after having mastered Civilian Foundations of Contract Law in Oxford Law and as an active Civil Law professor in UP Law, he played an instrumental role in developing strong advocacy positions on Civil Law matters. Mr. San Juan is also the Firm’s constitutionalist, having rendered key opinions and led the Firm in handling a Supreme Court case on constitutional issues of far-reaching importance to the Firm’s clients.

Before joining the Firm, Mr. San Juan was a top-ranked corporate Senior Associate (SA) in a large Energy and M&A-focused firm where he handled high-value M&As from 2011-2020. While he was only an SA then, he was the unrivaled leader of the firm’s Antitrust Practice, including Anti-Money Laundering practice. In 2019, a global law firm based in Brussels nominated Mr. San Juan to Europe’s Who's Who Legal: Competition-Future Leaders 2019 (Non-Partners Category).

Mr. San Juan wears multiple hats. He is concurrently a Managing Director at SL and Partners Consultancy Inc. (SLPCI), where he has been actively involved in deal-making in hydroelectric power and other renewable energy projects and is helping his Partners as they work towards pioneering the first-ever Green and Sustainable Mining Project in the Philippines.

Mr. San Juan is also an exceptional academic. In June 2023, he made history as he was appointed as the Founding Dean of the Liceo de Masbate School of Law, a Catholic law school. He is currently a Commercial and Civil Law professor at UP Law, a member of its Civil Law cluster since 2020, and most recently a Bar Lecturer for Civil Law at the UP Law Bar Review Institute. He is also a distinguished member of the Panel of Experts in Civil Law that proposes answers to the Civil Law Bar Exam. He is also a Founding Faculty Member of the ASCOT College of Law in the Province of Aurora, where he is Professorial Lecturer for Commercial Laws, including Financial Rehabilitation and Insolvency.

When he is not wearing his hats as a lawyer, law school dean, or professor reviewing/revising his draft treatises on various fields of law, Mr. San Juan loves to spend quality time chatting with his extremely smart niece, watching the latest trending Netflix series, dining at his favorite Japanese restaurants, and traveling around the world.

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