K&L Gates

The Firm

Located in Milan, close to the famous Duomo, the Italian K&L Gates office opened in 2012. With a highly reputable and recognised multidisciplinary team, K&L Gates covers all the main subjects of business law and is often involved in complex cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and joint venture transactions, corporate reorganisations, turnarounds, and carve-out deals. With a solid background in transactional real estate, investment funds, banking, restructuring, and litigation matters, K&L Gates’ Milan office serves clients in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, technology, real estate, consumer, energy, financial services, healthcare, and transportation. The client roster includes leading Italian multinationals and corporations, private equity firms, SMEs, startups and scale-ups, investment banks, funds, and financial investors in a wide and varied range of transactions.

Main Areas of Practice

Corporate M&A and Private Equity:

The Corporate M&A team assists important local and multinational industrial groups, private equity and venture capital funds, entrepreneurs, and medium-sized enterprises in all stages of operation from structuring, due diligence, drafting, and negotiation of contractual documents and drafting of management remuneration and incentive schemes, all the way to the implementation of exit strategies through public or private sales transactions. This team also assists listed and nonlisted companies and their respective members and directors on a wide range of corporate governance issues, including all issues related to capital transactions and corporate and commercial law matters.

Real Estate:

The Real Estate practice provides assistance in a broad spectrum of core, value-added, and real estate development transactions to investors, both Italian and foreign, through the use of regulated parties, such as real estate funds and SICAF (Italian investment funds with a fixed capital) and for all asset classes. The Italian team has over 15 years of experience and offers assistance in all phases of investment and development, both in Italy and in cross-border operations, including acquisitions (asset and share deal) and portfolio transactions, development projects, real estate finance, leasing, town planning and environmental requirements, and tax aspects.

Asset Management and Investment Funds:

Lawyers in the Asset Management and Investment Funds practice work closely with clients throughout the entire life cycle of relevant alternative investment funds, from the structuring and establishment phase, to the investment and divestment of assets, all the way up to the final liquidation, and covering regulatory and compliance requirements. The team assists both domestic and international providers in the structuring and operation of private equity funds; private debt and loan origination; venture capital and real estate, in contractual and corporate form; and funds and parallel funds. Clients also receive assistance with sponsor and institutional investor relationships, helping with the negotiation of financial and governance terms.

Finance:

The Milan office assists a wide variety of clients, including banks, asset managers and investment funds, corporate entities, advisers, agents and trustees, directors, and statutory auditors, both on the lender and borrower sides. Clients are guided through all structuring, negotiating, and closing phases of financing transactions—whether secured or unsecured; bilateral or syndicated; carried out with traditional instruments or by issuing securities; aimed at extraordinary initiatives or for general corporate purposes; with particular focus on acquisition finance, real estate finance and asset-based finance, corporate lending, refinancing, and turnaround financing. In addition, the team assists banks and investors with the sale of receivables, whether related to portfolios or single-name securities.

Energy:

The K&L Gates Energy industry group consists of professionals with broad and proven experience both in traditional sectors—oil and gas, natural gas, and power—and renewable energy sectors, including generation of electricity through photovoltaic, wind, hydroelectric, and biomass plants. Principal clients include banks and investment funds, both domestic and foreign, gas and electricity producers, wholesalers, traders, retail companies, and contractors. They receive assistance through an integrated and cross-sector approach in relation to extraordinary transactions, financing for the construction of new plants and infrastructures, commercial contracts (supply, trading, and tolling), project contracts, regulatory aspects, civil and administrative litigation, and arbitration.

Restructuring and Insolvency:

The team’s experience in the financing field, combined with knowledge in corporate and litigation matters, allows the firm to assist clients in all aspects of restructuring and insolvency processes, whether at the negotiation or crisis stage, or from the creditor or debtor side, including corporate restructuring, debt agreements concluded in or out of court, insolvency, evaluation of the risk of liability of directors and shareholders, and acquisition of assets from insolvency proceedings.

Litigation and Dispute Resolution:

Litigation is one of the main practices in the Milan office. Lawyers have extensive experience assisting domestic and international clients in commercial, corporate, bankruptcy, and procurement disputes. The firm takes a strategic approach aimed at supporting clients in the management of any conflict situation, always taking into account their objectives and interests. Clients include companies of all sizes in the manufacturing, energy, finance, real estate, logistics, and transport sectors, among others. The team also has significant experience in both national and international arbitration proceedings, including those administered by the main arbitration boards (ICC, LCIA, VIAC, SIAC, and CAM).

Administrative Law:

The Italian team has acquired significant experience in the development of complex, multidisciplinary projects. The team assists its clients—Italian and foreign private companies, various funds, public authorities, and joint enterprises—in a range of transactions related to administrative, town planning, environmental, and procurement law. Clients are represented both at the prelitigation and litigation stages and in disputes before administrative and arbitration courts. Clients also receive assistance in all administrative aspects of regulated sectors, such as the energy industry.

Labour, Employment, and Workplace Safety:

Lawyers in the Milan office have deep experience in employment law and trade union relationships, providing assistance to employers, whether in the interest of Italian subsidiaries of multinational groups or Italian companies belonging to industrial groups. In particular, the Labour, Employment, and Workplace Safety practice is active in corporate restructuring and reorganization, trade union relationships, and litigation. The practice is highly skilled with due diligence activities, including incentive plans and management by objectives, health and safety in the workplace, individual and collective dismissals, collective agreements at the company level, employment and self-employment contracts, noncompete and stability agreements, agency agreements, expatriates, privacy and data protection, codes of conduct and company policies, and M&A related activities.

Tax:

The Tax practice group offers a wide range of tax-related services, with a particular focus on financial institutions and structured finance, real estate, structuring of private equity, and M&A. Professionals assist domestic and foreign operators and investors with all tax aspects of real estate transactions, from acquisition to disposal. The Milan team is also very active in the structuring of complex M&A, both domestic and cross-border, for strategic investors and private equity funds. Assistance also is provided in the areas of securitisation, nonperforming loan transactions, financing, debt restructuring, and project finance. Other areas of experience include taxation of stocks, bonds, and complex financial instruments. Professionals regularly assist clients in tax audits and assessments. As a result, the team has extensive experience in out-of-court settlements of tax disputes and tax litigation.

Intellectual Property:

The Intellectual Property practice provides legal assistance to local and international clients on industrial law and copyright matters, as well as matters related to information technology. In particular, the team has experience assisting with the protection and transfer of intellectual property rights, including trademarks, domain names, designs, patents, trade secrets, know-how, publicity rights, and software. Professionals also deal with issues of unfair competition, advertising law, e-commerce, consumer protection, and personal data protection. Clients receive assistance in drafting and negotiating transfer, licensing, distribution, advertising, sponsorship, and technology transfer agreements.

Antitrust, Competition, and Trade Regulation:

The Antitrust, Competition, and Trade Regulation practice group is present in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. This team of global lawyers handles complex antitrust and competition issues around the world. The team is fully integrated and works daily on various cross-border matters. Clients have been successfully represented in the context of complex global mergers, antitrust investigations for alleged abuse of dominant position and anticompetitive practices (cartels), sector-specific inquiries, and state aid matters. The team has deep bench experience in the fields of luxury and fashion, e-commerce, and pharmaceuticals, and it works with clients in regulated and fast-growing emerging sectors, such as energy, software, transport, and intellectual property protection. Services include concentrations, third-party interventions in the context of concentrations, antitrust compliance, cartels, abuse of dominant positions, sector-specific antitrust investigations, and state aid.

Defence, Security, and Cybersecurity:

Due to its deep knowledge of this industry, K&L Gates professionals assist companies or other public entities dealing with or involved in the industry of defence, national security, and cybersecurity. The firm provides support in the following main areas of practice: corporate and M&A activities, including support to authorisations and approvals required in the context of extraordinary transactions (e.g., golden power regime, notifications of approvals for classified activities); commercial matters involving all traditional contractual arrangements of these entities active in this industry; public procurement when dealing with Ministry of Defence or other critical infrastructures or other national security entities; and export control regimes and other regulatory matters associated with the supply, commercialisation, or distribution of classified products or services. With regard to cybersecurity, lawyers provide support in all the regulatory matters of prevention, response, and resilience associated in dealing with national critical infrastructures and networks, as well as in several unregulated and nonqualified contexts in strengthening the level of security and cybersecurity for private entities.

Milan Managing Partner: Giampaolo Salsi

K&L Gates Offices:

Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brisbane, Brussels, Charleston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Doha, Dubai, Dublin, Fort Worth, Frankfurt, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, Houston, Kansas City, London, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, Melbourne, Miami, Milan, Munich, Nashville, Newark, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, Perth, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, Research Triangle Park, San Francisco, Seattle, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo, Washington, DC, and Wilmington.