Charles Russell Speechlys

The firm: Charles Russell Speechlys is an international law firm with a focus on private capital, at the intersection of personal, family and business. The firm offers a broad range of skills and collective legal expertise and experience with an international outlook across the full spectrum of business and personal needs.

The firm is built on trusted, personal relationships with clients, guiding them through their most pressing challenges and rewarding opportunities. Charles Russell Speechlys achieves this by getting to the heart of clients’ needs to bring them the best-fit solutions – based on years of experience, collective legal expertise and global reach.

Being personally invested has made the firm a leader in the world of dynamic growth and family businesses, and among the world’s leading creators and owners of private wealth and their families. Major corporates and institutions benefit from their personalised approach as they embed themselves in the teams of their clients. Working alongside them and connecting them with the right people across the firm to help them excel in new opportunities.

The firm is headquartered in London with offices across the UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. When working with individuals and businesses that operate in a single country or across borders, the firm will put together the perfect team – pulling from their sector and geographical expertise and partnerships with the best law firms across the world covering 200 legal jurisdictions.

From our Paris office, we offer a comprehensive range of legal and tax services.

Types of work undertaken
Corporate: Our corporate team offers a comprehensive range of legal services. We work with both public and privately owned companies, entrepreneurs and family groups, as well as their shareholders, executives and management teams.

Our advice in M&A and private equity covers the full scope of corporate activities, from structuring, growth capital and acquisitions to reorganisations and sales.

Our team's M&A work encompasses French and cross-border acquisitions and divestments, complex reorganisations and restructurings, corporate rescues and distressed transactions.

Our highly experienced private equity team has an in-depth knowledge of advising on legal, tax and financing aspects of private equity transactions including MBOs, MBIs, secondary buy-outs and exits. Their experience includes advising French and international investment funds on the acquisition and disposal of their investments as well as management teams, on both legal and tax aspects, in such transactions.

Other areas on which we advise include:

• corporate governance, commercial contracts
• legal, tax structuring and due diligence advice in relation to the acquisition of companies and assets (including real estate)
• contentious issues arising out of commercial contracts, licensing agreements, competition issues, and
• the establishment and tax structuring of entities including private equity, venture capital and real estate funds.

Corporate tax: Our corporate tax team helps create tax frameworks which stand the test of time, adaptable to changes within our client's business or outside it.

From large scale projects to bespoke advice on discreet matters, our team has the expertise to support them.

We advise on the tax implications of company transactions such as the acquisition or disposal of businesses, reorganisations and the use of innovative structure to hold assets.

We also advise on tax disputes with tax authorities, VAT matters and the taxation of real estate.

Our team advises on changes in tax legislation and reforms that may impact the sectors that our client is active in. Bringing together experts in our UK, Luxembourg and Swiss offices we can also advise on international tax matters, working closely with other trusted advisers.

We like to build partnerships with our clients. We treat all of our clients in the same way, starting with getting to know them thoroughly. This means our solutions are tailored for each client's needs.

Corporate restructuring and insolvency: Our team in Paris offers pragmatic solutions to the operational and financial legal issues one may face, both nationally and internationally, by assisting in deciding between various options available.

With the support of a global network of well-known professionals and an in-depth knowledge of cross-border bankruptcy proceedings and jurisdictions, our team can provide our client with the best advice to manage complex situations.

Our team advises and assists debtors, creditors, shareholders and managers on all legal issues related to corporate restructuring, in a contentious or non-contentious context:

• Restructuring of companies or groups: acquisitions and disposals of businesses and assets, implementation of exit strategies, optimisation of legal structures, etc
• Debt restructuring: renegotiation of debts, purchase of receivables under a continuation plan, assistance in securing loans through appropriate guarantees
• Assisting and presenting takeover bids for shares, business assets of companies in difficulty or assets
• Assisting shareholders, individuals or investment funds
• Assisting creditors, banks or suppliers with debtors: debt collection, property claims, declarations and challenges to claims, assertion of liability, etc
• Assisting managers in the implementation of successful turnaround strategies
• Assisting guarantors and managers, sued for sanctions or contributing to the liabilities of bankrupted companies

Employment: Our employment team advises on formulating business strategies as well as at each step of their implementation.

Our priority is to respond to our client's requirements at the same time as maintaining the highest degree of legal certainty.

Our team becomes involved mainly in one-off operations that involve structural problems, in particular in situations that are stressed or conflictual, working both with French and international companies.

We also work alongside our corporate and M&A teams in the context of sales, mergers and acquisitions and outsourcing.

We advise clients on the following issues:

• business reorganisations and collective redundancy exercises undertaken for economic reasons
• collective bargaining and employee relationship management
• salary based saving schemes
• individual employment relationships
• individual and collective employment disputes
• IT charters and whistleblowing systems, and
• delegation of powers.

Litigation and dispute resolution: We advise and represent French and foreign clients before French courts, and in internal and international arbitration. We also regularly advise on pre-litigation or settlement negotiations, preferring ADR to keep disputes out of formal proceedings wherever possible.

In the corporate arena, we regularly advise on commercial disputes arising out of corporate contracts or transactions including acquisitions, investments and re-organisations, shareholder arrangements, directors' duties and corporate finance transactions.

Private wealth: Present in the four major European investment and wealth management marketplaces – London, Luxembourg, Paris and Switzerland – as well as in the Middle East, we are one of the few firms able to provide comprehensive advice in the management of private wealth. From our Paris offices, we work on the legal and tax aspects of cross-border transactions or investments into France.

We advise clients whose interests span multiple jurisdictions, in particular Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, South America, India and Asia.

In Paris, the private wealth team is led by two highly experienced and renowned partners. Under their leadership, the team is able to provide clients with an integral service, to help them manage the complex and constantly changing tax, financial and legal problems they face.

We advise managers, families and individuals (including, where applicable, their family office) who own companies, helping them find an optimal tax structure for their business and personal assets both in France and overseas.

In terms of wealth and inheritance taxes, we work on all types of transactions involving the development and diversification of assets (in particular acquisitions and sales of assets, equity stakes, transfer operations, settling shareholders’ agreements and family agreements, etc).

The private wealth team works closely with the corporate private equity teams and the firm’s foreign offices to assist private clients and their families in establishing appropriate vehicles for structuring and managing their assets and their activities in France and abroad.

We are also able to manage entrepreneurs, directors and shareholders in private groups, both in France and abroad, all the legal and tax aspects of:

• holding property or financial assets (works of art, vehicles, etc)
• international wills, tax and estate planning, including transnational structuring where family members or assets are located in multiple jurisdictions
• optimal cross-border structuring of financial assets, depending on the professional and private assets held by its clients, and
• preventing conflicts between members of a family group or between private investors, using our experience and expertise drafting family agreements and/or agreements between shareholders.

Structured and project finance: We are able to provide our client with a personable, highly responsive specialist service, suited to the needs and requirements of their specific business and projects.

Our team advises on the entire range of domestic and cross-border financing transactions as we have significant experience in structuring, negotiating and restructuring all types of financing and refinancing transactions worldwide. We can advise French and foreign arrangers, agents, participating lenders, mezzanine funds and borrowers. Our team has the expertise to assist funds, institutional and private investors and management companies in their structured finance and debt restructuring transactions. Our team operates through our offices in all types of financing including corporate financing, acquisition financing (listed and unlisted companies, LBOs, MBOs, MBIs and other leveraged buyouts), syndicated loans, and asset financing, providing clients with hands-on, practical and tailored support that their needs.

Our team has a specific focus on the energy and infrastructure sector and therefore can work both in the legal and financial structuring of financing transactions and in the drafting and negotiation of the documentation specific to this type of transaction (credit documentation, security interests and guarantees, etc.).

Other offices: Cheltenham, Doha, Dubai, Geneva, Guilford, Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Manama, Singapore, Zurich.