Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

The firm: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP (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 ground-breaking and business-critical mandates. The firm’s 2,800-plus lawyers deliver results worldwide through its own offices and alongside leading local firms. Freshfields’ commitment, local and multinational expertise, and business know-how mean its clients rely on the firm when it matters most.

Types of work undertaken: Antitrust, competition and trade: Freshfields has an unrivalled market share of in-depth Phase II merger investigations by the European Commission. 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 and public procurement.

Corporate: in the last five years, Freshfields has advised on more cross-border M&A deals than any other law firm in the world. It has also topped the European, Asia-Pacific and UK league tables over the same period.

Highlights for 2016 include advising: AB InBev on its £71bn acquisition of SABMiller; Henderson Capital on its all-share merger with Janus Capital; Softbank on its acquisition of ARM Holdings; Formula 1 Group and CVC Capital on the sale of Formula 1; and Hewlett Packard Enterprise on the ‘spin merger’ of its software business segment into Micro Focus International.

Disputes: with disputes lawyers from over 50 nationalities, Freshfields has advised on the most high-profile disputes, multi-jurisdictional investigations, competition claims, patent litigation and politically sensitive arbitrations in recent history. The team’s highlights for 2016 include securing a US$967.8m award for Rusoro Mining, and a US$1.39bn award on behalf of Canadian gold mining company Crystallex at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. 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, banking, energy and environmental, with major mandates for clients including Anglo American, KPMG, Smith & Nephew and ConocoPhillips.

Employment, pensions and benefits: landmark cases for Freshfields include: acting for the trustee of the Aggregate Industries Pension Plan in negotiating a bulk annuity buy-in with Just Retirement Ltd and advising AB InBev on the negotiation of the complex employee and incentives provisions of the main transaction documents in the context of its merger with SABMiller. The firm also advised on the implications of the transaction from an employee information and consultation perspective across the globe.

Finance: Freshfields has recently advised: the Monarch Group, a leading UK independent airline group, on its continued turnaround, HDFC on the first ever corporate issuance of Synthetic INR Notes, otherwise known as ‘Masala Bonds’, Zero Bypass Limited on construction of Slovakia’s D4 Highway and R7 Expressway. The deal, which is in excess of €1.7bn, is one of the largest European PPP projects of 2016. The firm has finance lawyers worldwide, covering restructuring and insolvency, banking, structured finance, derivatives and capital markets, asset finance and project finance.

Real estate: the firm’s real estate practice has advised on some of the largest and highest profile real estate transactions including: IVG Immobilien on the sale of its subsidiary OFFICEFIRST and TPG Real Estate and its partner Ivanho© Cambridge on the sale of P3 Logistic Parks. Freshfields acted on the entire cycle of ownership of P3.

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 RWE/Essent in its litigation against the Dutch government on a measure which would impose a tax on use of coal in coal-fired electricity plants.

Other offices: Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Bahrain, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, Dubai, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Moscow, Munich, New York, Paris, Rome, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Vienna and Washington, DC.