Simmons & Simmons

Alexandre is head of the firm’s Healthcare & Life Sciences sector group. He specialises in strategic legal and regulatory advice, principally on behalf of pharmaceutical, medical devices and biotech companies and significant players in other highly regulated industries. His experience as a litigator mainly covers product liability, breach of contract, break off of negotiations, comparative advertising and claim recovery. Alexandre also has significant expertise in transactional and licensing negotiations, compliance audits and advice on regulatory matters, advising notably sponsors of clinical trials, and major companies in the sector on pricing, reimbursement, advertising and commercial practices. Alexandre is experienced in crisis management and frequently liaises with the French regulatory authorities on behalf of industry players. Alexandre was elected to the board of France Biotech in 2011, becoming Vice-President of the association in 2013. He represents France Biotech at the European confederation of pharmaceutical entrepreneurs (EUCOPE).

Céline Larmet

Céline is admitted to both the Paris and the Luxembourg bar. She specialised in finance law, including asset-based finance, syndicated and bilateral lending, asset-backed bonds with a focus on capital call financings and real estate financings as well as portfolio transfers and restructuring. Celine acts for all market participants: lenders, borrowers, senior, junior and mezzanine debt players. Céline also specialised in real estate restructuring and insolvency work, working with lenders and borrowers and with insolvency practitioners.

Chloë Nessim

Chloë has a strong expertise in real estate (including structured real estate), corporate, asset management and financial market, with a particular focus on clients in the asset management and investment funds sectors. She has extensive experience advising on real estate structuring and transactional work including sales and purchases of companies, mergers, demergers, joint venture with a special focus on cross-border transactions. Chloë also advises on the structuring of investment funds and other investment product, structured finance products and securitisations.

Christian Taylor

Christian is a corporate partner in our Paris office. His core practice consists of advising on private mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures, with an emphasis on the life sciences and TMT sectors. Almost all of Christian’s work is cross-border, often involving investments or divestments in France or francophone Africa. He has been permanently based in Paris since 1998, and is fluent in French. In addition to his work in France, Christian has advised on matters in over 20 countries across the African continent, from Algeria to Zambia.

Claire Le Touzé

Claire has a wide range of expertise, assisting clients on all French employment law matters, contentious and non-contentious, and specialising in the Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT) and Life Sciences (LS) sectors. She regularly advises IT and biotech companies, as well as laboratories. Clients also benefit from her in-depth expertise on a recent French law provision on gender pay gap. Claire provides advice to French and international employers on collective relationships with staff representative institutions by negotiating collective agreements (gender equality, working time, remote work), as well as negotiating settlement agreements, implementing bonus schemes and providing strategical advice on termination of key managers. She also works on all employment aspects of corporate deals and represents companies in disputes with their employees. Claire regularly assists with mediations, conducts internal investigations for her clients (discrimination and harassment) and defends against whistleblowing claims.

Elisa Bocianowski

Elisa heads the Paris office Real Estate practice, incorporated in our Financial Markets Department. She advises national and international institutional investors (real estate funds, asset managers, property companies, etc.) in all their real estate transactions. Throughout her career, Elisa has focused on real estate transactions (acquisition of buildings and real estate companies), construction and real estate development law and rental management with a specific expertise in commercial lease law.

Emilie Danglades-Perez

Emilie is a managing associate in the Dispute Resolution group in Paris and is specialised in Data Protection and Privacy. She has provided advice to a wide range of clients within the course of their GDPR compliance plan. She has also provided practical assistance to handle data subjects access requests, personal data breach, and complaints relating to infringement of privacy regulations. She has assisted in advising clients from various sectors to develop innovative and digital tools in compliance with privacy regulations, Internet users rights and consumer law. She has also helped in implementing digital marketing projects in accordance with GDPR and ePrivacy requirements. She has a significant experience in the Life Sciences sector where she assists pharma and medical device companies in their projects involving digital therapeutics and Big Data. She also provides assistance for the development of clinical trials in France and in Europe in accordance with privacy regulations. She is also specialised in commercial and product liability litigation, and represents French and foreign companies before civil and commercial courts.

Eric Le Quellenec

Eric is a partner in our Corporate and Commercial practice group in Paris, with a focus on digital business. Eric thrives on developing innovative legal solutions for this rapidly evolving area, informed by his first-hand knowledge of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) sector and its commercial challenges. He knows advanced technologies inside out, which means that Eric’s legal advice is as forward-thinking as the sector itself. He does not restrict himself to one-off high profile matters but addresses the more day-to-day challenges faced by our clients. That can be done through contract management, helping IT providers and clients alike to keep any kind of project on tracks in terms of cost, quality and deadline, eventually getting the best of it. As well as being the firm’s go-to expert on cloud computing, Eric advises on all types of commercial contracts in the IT sector. He’s well-versed in data protection, cyber security, software licensing, procurement and regulatory matters. He is a leading expert on privacy and he guided a large number of clients through their GDPR implementation projects, whether it be as internal or external data protection officer (DPO).

Etienne Kowalski

Etienne specializes in dispute resolution. He advises and represents clients in commercial and real estate matters (construction, distribution, lease, acquisitions) in France and internationally (Africa). He also has significant experience in regulated industries such as the healthcare sector where he regularly represents clients on a large range of disputes (product liability, commercial, advertisement). He is a member of the firm's crime group and regularly assists or represents companies in criminal cases including product liability, public tenders, corruption or relationship between industry and healthcare professionals. He also advises clients on compliance and anticorruption issues.

Frédérique Potin

Frédérique is a “Of Counsel” working within the French IP team. Frédérique advises on a wide range of intellectual property and data protection matters. She has acquired expertise in dealing with the intellectual property and data protection aspects of acquisitions and corporate restructuring operations, as well as on contentious matters. She developed a particular area of expertise in IP licensing work, advising clients on complex development and licensing contracts. Her expertise includes advising on ownership of inventions and intellectual property rights of employees and public agents, and on negotiating and drafting co-ownership agreements and collaborations with French academics. Frédérique Potin is an active member of LES, being part of the Committee working on public/private relationships. She is also a member of the French association of biotechs, France Biotech.

Jacques-Antoine Robert

Jacques-Antoine is Country Head of France and manages the Paris Dispute Resolution department. He is a member of the firm's crime group. Jacques-Antoine is a general commercial lawyer, acting mainly for major industrial groups - notably high tech, pharmaceutical companies, automotive suppliers, chemical industries - shareholders of such groups, their insurers or investment funds. His practice covers high level national and cross border disputes in contract law, tort law (product liability) and crisis management. He represents his clients in regulatory matters, transactions, arbitration and disputes involving commercial, corporate and/or liability issues.

Julia Gori

Julia assists French and international clients on all aspects of French employment law both in contentious and non-contentious matters. Over the last few years Julia has assisted clients on strategic reorganisations such as Brexit relocations, mass redundancies, post-acquisition integrations, etc. She specialises in the Financial institutions / AM&IF and TMT sectors. Her area of expertise covers collective aspects of employment law (professional elections, relationships with the employee representatives, collective agreements, working time, reorganisations, redundancies, background checks and monitoring) and individual aspects (drafting employment documentation, dismissals, negotiation and settlement agreements, bonus schemes and restrictive covenants).

Laurence Renard

Laurence is the International Practice Group Head of Employment, and also leads the Employment practice in France (10+ lawyers). She has almost 25+ years’ experience in this area with a focus on advisory and litigation work for sophisticated and demanding clients in an international environment. She regularly guides them through the complexities and frustrations of French employment law in contentious and non-contentious matters. She gives practical and to the point advice, resulting in pragmatic solutions for her clients. She advises employers on collective issues (relations with employee representative bodies, collective agreements, restructuring) and individual issues (dismissals, settlement agreements, bonus plans, etc). Laurence is also an active member of the European Professional Women’s Network (EPWN). She is a recognised lawyer and her legal input on news stories is quoted in the media.

Louis Delestrée

Louis is a managing associate in the Paris Real Estate team. Louis assists clients on various real estate transactions and regularly advises on the negotiation of commercial leases and real estate acquisitions for national and international institutional investors.

Louis-Marie Pillebout

Louis-Marie is a partner in our Litigation group in Paris. He is a specialist of financial disputes and corporate litigation. He works primarily for financial institutions, listed companies and their executives. He specialises in corporate, financial and equity litigation and primarily assists the management teams of listed companies and financial institutions, as well as shareholders and investment funds in the context of their litigation (judicial, arbitral, or criminal). He advises both French and international players, especially in complex cross-border litigations relating to M&A, shareholders' agreements, and bank fraud.

Ombline Ancelin

Ombline Ancelin is the lead Competition partner in the Paris office at Simmons & Simmons. Her practice encompasses the full range of competition law, including merger control, anti-competitive practices, distribution and franchising, and also EU general law and consumer law. She also regularly advises on foreign investment control issues. She represents clients at both national and international levels, in antitrust investigations and litigation in several sectors with a particular in-depth knowledge in the life sciences, TMT, energy, fast-moving consumer goods sectors. She works on both advisory and contentious matters, and litigates before the French Competition Authority, the Paris Court of Appeal and Commercial Courts. Moreover, she regularly advises clients on their commercial policies and the organization of their distribution networks across Europe. She assists clients during competition inspections and conducts internal audits as part of her work on competition compliance. Ombline has been acknowledged among the “40 in their 40s Notable Women Competition Professionals in Europe” in 2019 by the platform for women competition professionals W@Competition. In 2021, she was elected as vice-president of the “Competition Commission” of ICC France.

Quentin Charluteau

Quentin specialises in dispute resolution and insurance law. His experience in these fields covers product liability, breach of contract, and insurance law both in dispute (Professional Indemnity, Financial lines, D&O) and regulatory matters (compliance, regulator investigations, review of policies).

Sandra Esquiva-Hesse

Partner

Sarah Bailey

Sarah specialises in soft IP and is responsible for the day to day running of the Paris Intellectual Property Department. She advises on all the aspects involved in the creation, exploitation and protection of trademarks, design rights, copyrights and domain names and is also well versed on the issues relating to unfair competition, dealing with both contentious and non-contentious matters. Sarah also deals with data protection and advertising matters.

Thierry Gontard

Thierry specialises in corporate finance with a particular focus on stock exchange and financial markets, in particular public takeovers and corporate governance of public companies. He also has an extensive knowledge of stock market litigation with a specific experience in the area of regulatory and judicial investigations, enforcement proceedings before French courts and market regulators in relation with market abuse, alleged breaches of stock exchange regulations and white collar crimes. He advises investment banks, insurance companies, public companies, asset managers and funds (hedge funds particularly). He regularly speaks at conferences and seminars with the AMF (including AMF Sanctions Committee).

Yves Baratte

Yves heads the Paris Office energy, natural resources and infrastructure team. He advises international corporate clients, funds, financial institutions and governments on complex power, water, natural resources (mining and oil & gas) and infrastructure projects internationally, with a particular focus on France and North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Yves is one of the co-heads of Simmons & Simmons’ African initiative. He regularly speaks at energy and natural resources conferences in France and internationally.