Bilal Sayyed
Bilal Sayyed is counsel at Hogan Lovells Cadwalader and senior competition counsel at TechFreedom. His practice and research focus on antitrust law, competition policy, merger review, and regulatory enforcement, with particular experience in energy, defense, health care, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and consumer markets.
Sayyed has served twice at the Federal Trade Commission. From 2018 to 2021, he was director of the Office of Policy Planning, where he helped develop and implement the agency’s competition and consumer-protection policy initiatives and led its work on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. Earlier, he served as attorney adviser to FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris and as an attorney in the Office of Policy Planning.
Before returning to the FTC, Sayyed practiced antitrust law at several major law firms, including Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, McDermott Will & Emery, Kirkland & Ellis, O’Melveny & Myers, and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. His work has included merger reviews, government investigations, Hart-Scott-Rodino Act compliance, and competition counseling.
Sayyed is an adjunct professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, where he has taught antitrust and European Union competition law and, beginning in 2026, cybersecurity and national-security law. He also hosts the “Rethinking Antitrust” podcast and previously taught antitrust law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
Sayyed earned a J.D. from George Mason University and a bachelor’s from Case Western Reserve University.
