NautaDutilh

The firm: NautaDutilh is an international law firm practising Dutch, Belgian, and Luxembourg and Dutch-Caribbean law. The firm was founded in 1724 and is one of the largest in the Benelux region, with offices in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Luxembourg as well as in London and New York.

What has kept us relevant all these years is adaptive thinking. This subtle art is all about learning how to think instead of being taught what to think. It allows us to deal with change, learn from new situations and think on our feet when solving problems on behalf of our clients.

NautaDutilh places particular emphasis on combining expertise in those practice areas which are relevant to its clients’ business with an understanding of the underlying industries, and their strategic and economic drivers. This approach defines NautaDutilh’s organisation with its dedicated teams for particular sectors, including financial institutions, real estate, private equity, life sciences, healthcare and energy and natural resources. These teams are all multidisciplinary, combining deep sector knowledge with the highest level of legal expertise.

While its practice is anchored in the jurisdictions of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, NautaDutilh works with a substantial number of clients involved in cross-border and multi-jurisdictional transactions and proceedings. The firm works on a non-exclusive basis with leading law firms throughout the world.

Main areas of practice: NautaDutilh is characterised by its significant banking and finance, corporate and dispute resolution capabilities, strengthened by other extensive practice areas.

Banking and finance: NautaDutilh fields the largest acquisition finance, structured finance and general bank lending team in the Netherlands, advising on complex, one-off financing arrangements as well as on mainstream financing arrangements. In addition, NautaDutilh advises on derivatives, financial services and regulatory matters to almost every major domestic or international bank, financial institution and regulatory body with interests in the Netherlands.

Capital markets: NautaDutilh enjoys an international reach through its offices in London and New York. Its capital markets team advises on a range of equity offerings including IPOs, secondary offerings and rights issues. Their debt capital markets expertise includes MTN and commercial paper programmes, notes issues, repackagings and the emerging markets segment of the Eurobond market. Securitisations are an additional focus area within NautaDutilh both for the domestic market and for pan-European transactions, with particular expertise in relation to RMBS and covered bond programmes.

Competition: the NautaDutilh competition practice has an established merger control capability and has significant experience litigating both before the European courts and in the national arena. The team carries out litigation relating to cases involving State aid, cartel damages, merger control and to behavioural cases such as distribution and horizontal cooperation.

Corporate and M&A: NautaDutilh has a significant public M&A capability having advised on almost all transactions involving competing public offers for companies listed in the Netherlands. The team also advises on the buying and selling of domestic and international private companies and businesses. A specific area of expertise is supporting private equity transactions. The corporate team also provides a broad range of advice on corporate and commercial matters with particular emphasis on corporate governance, reorganisations and international joint ventures. The team’s ability to advise and to execute is strengthened  by its civil law notarial practice.

Dispute resolution: NautaDutilh handles a broad range of litigation and arbitration relating to securities, transactions, insolvency and restructuring, officers’ and directors’ liability, insurance, IP, employment, regulatory, fiscal and administrative law related issues and commercial cases and benefits from having the only true stand-alone arbitration team in the Dutch market.

The firm is a leading player in class actions, having acted on the ground-breaking Converium case which established the Netherlands as the only European country that has enforced a worldwide class action settlement on an opt-out basis for investors who had been dismissed from a US securities class action by the US court.

Employment and pensions: as well as advising on the employment law aspects of corporate transactions, in particular with respect to consultation requirements, employee participation and the replacement, and employment terms, of board members, the NautaDutilh pensions and employment team advises on other contentious and non-contentious employment law matters, including collective and individual dismissals.

Insurance and liability: NautaDutilh provides a broad range of services to insurers, reinsurers and brokers, as well as to companies. The team advises on, and litigates in, all key areas of insurance and civil and commercial liability, including professional, medical, environmental and product liability. The team has extensive expertise in both contentious and non-contentious cases.

Intellectual property: NautaDutilh specialises in patent and trade mark litigation, but also enjoys considerable expertise in the areas of copyright, designs, and neighbouring and database rights, as well as advertising and domain name disputes. The firm litigates nationally and across borders in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium and regularly coordinates multi-jurisdictional litigation before European tribunals.

Real estate and infrastructure: with a substantial team of lawyers, the real estate and infrastructure team supports its clients through the entire life cycle of a real estate/infrastructure project from the development, construction and financing through to the operation of the underlying real estate or infrastructure. Specific areas of enabling expertise include finance, PPP, project development, asset management, landlord and tenant law, planning and zoning, environmental law and construction law.

Restructuring and insolvency: the team advises on financial restructurings as well as on insolvency related litigation and specialises in cross-border cases or cases with an international component. 80% of its cases are carried out in cooperation with foreign law firms.

Taxation: in addition to advising on the taxation aspects of corporate and financial transactions, the NautaDutilh taxation team has an established practice advising corporate clients on their ongoing tax affairs and tax planning.