Gate Avocats

GATE Avocats specializes in business law and supports its clients at decisive moments in their operations, through both advisory and litigation services. GATE Avocats’ partners share the same vision of their profession: a customized added-value approach characterized by close involvement with their clients. As a strategic partner, GATE Avocats advises its clients on M&A transactions, tax, competition law and conflict resolution.

CORPORATE/M&A

We offer our clients comprehensive services in business law, covering the principal aspects of their economic activities and the life of their company: mergers and acquisitions, joint-ventures, strategic alliances, external growth transactions, disposals, restructurings. More generally, our partners advise their clients on all their company law issues.

VENTURE CAPITAL AND PRIVATE EQUITY

We advise both company management seeking new capital and private investors and private equity funds with their fundraising transactions, negotiating shareholders’ agreements and monitoring their investments.

SECURITIES LAW

We assist our clients, including executives and shareholders of listed companies, with strategic transactions (IPOs, tender offers, squeeze-outs, and exempt securities offerings) and more generally with compliance issues arising from their regulatory obligations and in their relations with the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorité des marchés financiers).

We defend our clients’ interests in securities litigation and market abuse proceedings before the French Financial Markets Authority’s sanctions committee and appellate bodies.

COMPETITION LAW AND ECONOMIC LAW

We represent our clients in merger control proceedings both in France and before the European Commission. We also coordinate with local partners to carry out the notifications required for a given transaction in other jurisdictions.We also represent our clients in competition litigation, acting for complainant companies in direct suits brought before the competition authorities (French Competition Authority (Autorité de la concurrence) or European Commission) or defending companies being sued before these authorities. We assist our clients at all stages of the dispute, from dawn raids to appeals before the competition authorities and national and European courts. Finally, we represent clients in alternative dispute resolution procedures (leniency, settlements, cooperation).In addition, we help clients identify and manage their antitrust risks. In particular, we assist clients with conducting due diligence audits aimed at providing an assessment of agreements (vertical or horizontal) and ensuring that they comply with competition laws. We also frequently design and help implement compliance programs and train in-house teams on competition law issues.

DISPUTE RESOLUTION

We defend our clients’ interests in the areas of business law (including white collar crime), banking law and insolvency law, both in the pre-litigation phase and before courts, arbitral tribunals and independent administrative authorities.

TRANSACTIONAL AND CORPORATE TAXATION

We advise investment funds, companies and entrepreneurs in connection with their M&A transactions (M&A, private equity, venture capital, LBOs). Our team has a strong experience in the field of tax structuring, tax audits and tax VDD. We assist companies in monitoring their tax situation, reorganizations and tax litigation. We also advise management teams or investment funds on structuring and implementing management packages. Our tax team also advises our clients in relation to the creation of private equity funds.

PRIVATE CLIENTS

We advise entrepreneurs and families on structuring their professional assets, particularly in the context of M&Atransactions (pre-sale reorganization: deferred capital gains tax schemes, transfer to future generations) or family transfers (Pactes Dutreil, split of ownership). Our team also has extensive experience in the taxation of trusts, estate planning (tax and civil matters), international successions, real estate investments and tax compliance (IFI, income tax, etc.).

TAX LITIGATION

We assist our clients in the context of tax audits or reassessments: analysis of the risk, preparation of the audit, assistance during the audit operations, representation of our clients throughout the procedure, development of a strategy to preserve their rights and negotiations with tax authorities and referral to the relevant committees and interlocutors.

We also assist our clients before civil and administrative Courts during litigation.