Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

Senior Partner: Georgia Dawson
Managing Partners: Alan Mason, Rick van Aerssen and Rafique Bachour.
Number of partners: circa 400
Number of lawyers: 2,800 plus
Languages: Members of the firm speak over 70 languages

Firm Overview:
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (Freshfields) is a global law firm with a long-standing track record of successfully supporting the world’s leading national and multinational corporations, financial institutions and governments on groundbreaking and business-critical mandates. Freshfields’ 2,800-plus lawyers deliver results worldwide through its own offices and alongside leading local firms. Freshfields’ commitment, local and multi-national expertise and business know-how means Freshfields’ clients rely on the firm when it matters most.

Main Areas of Practice: Antitrust, Competition & Trade:
Freshfields’ competition practice offers unrivalled expertise in international, EU and national competition law matters. It advises financial institutions, governments and other clients worldwide through complex remedy negotiations across all sectors on all competition issues, including:
■ Merger control
■ Abuse of dominance
■ Cartel investigations
■ Follow-on and other antitrust litigation
■ Compliance
■ State aid
■ Public procurement
Contact: Thomas Janssens

Corporate:
In the past few years, Freshfields has advised on more cross-border M&A deals than any other law firm in the world. It has also consistently topped the European, Asia-Pacific and UK league tables.
Recent highlights include advising:

• AstraZeneca PLC on its $39bn acquisition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc.
• Cazoo on its £7bn business combination with SPAC AJAX and subsequent listing on the NYSE
• Aon on the sale of Willis Towers Watson assets to Gallagher for approx. $3.57bn
• Comcast Corporation on its £30.6 billion cash offer to acquire the entire share capital of Sky plc

Contact: Julian Pritchard

Disputes Resolution:
Freshfields has helped clients manage some of the most high-profile and business critical disputes, multi-jurisdictional investigations, competition claims, patent litigation and politically sensitive arbitrations in recent history. Freshfields is the market leader for arbitration, competition, intellectual property, investigations, regulation and complex commercial litigation. The firm has been particularly active in the technology, financial services, energy and consumer sectors.
Contact: Andrew Hart

People & Reward:
Freshfields work on all aspects of labour and employment law and advise global employers on everything from major projects (e.g. M&A transactions, cross border business restructuring), compliance and policies, whistleblowing and workplace investigations as well as hiring and firing. The team is equally expert in remuneration and reward matters and the design and implementation of bespoke incentive plans. It has significant experience advising on the most complex pensions projects, including liability management, funding and covenant support and scheme consolidations.
Contact: Boris Dzida

Finance:
The firm has finance lawyers worldwide, covering restructuring and insolvency, banking, structured finance, derivatives and capital markets, asset finance and project finance.
Freshfields has recently advised:
■ Malaysia Airlines on its global restructuring, which included the pioneering use of a U.K. scheme of arrangement for its aircraft leases
■ Retailers House of Fraser, Debenhams and Arcadia on their respective financial restructurings
■ CVC and Messer Group on the acquisition financing for the $3.3bn purchase of gas businesses in North and South America from Linde
■ The lenders on the €12bn project financing of Gazprom’s gas processing plant in Amur, eastern Russia

Real Estate:
Freshfields’ real estate practice advises on investment transactions, development projects, coinvestment structures, such as joint ventures, and all aspects of corporate real estate. The firm works for some of the largest, most high-profile organisations in the sector: private equity, sovereign wealth and pension funds, real estate investment trusts, and property developers and financiers.
Contact: Johannes Conradi

Regulatory:
Freshfields are market leaders in proactively identifying risk arising from legislative changes, helping multinational businesses to minimise it and working closely with regulatory authorities in multiple jurisdictions. The firm’s regulatory lawyers are spread across several practice groups, including antitrust, competition and trade, data and IP, people and reward, tax and financial regulatory, with vast experience of working on strategic advisory, transactional, investigative and enforcement issues, including:
■ State aid
■ Cartel investigations
■ Merger control
■ Pricing and sales strategies
■ Data protection and security
■ Workplace investigations
Contact: Michael Raffan

Tax:
Freshfields’ tax practice advises clients across all sectors on their most exacting deals, tax investigations and disputes, and consultancy tax matters, worldwide. The tax practice has recently advised:

• Advised AB InBev on the tax aspects of its acquisition of SABMiller, including the divestiture of SABMiller’s central and eastern European business, and the disposal of the Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime brands.
• RELX Group on the simplification of its UK/Netherlands dual-listed company structure into a single parent company listed in London, Amsterdam and New York via a cross-border merger of RELX NV into RELX PLC

Contact: David Haworth