About

Michael Bütter is regarded as ‘the star among German corporate counsel’, who has ‘successfully driven forward some of the most complex and high-volume projects in the German legal market’, based on his ‘outstanding combination of legal, tactical, commercial and soft skills’, say observers who rate him as ‘among the most versatile CCs’ and as a ‘charismatic team leader’. His responsibilities comprise legal, compliance, data protection, export control, M&A, and governance. He can draw on his comprehensive experience, including heading the legal department of Deutsche Annington Immobilien, Germany’s largest housing corporation, prior to joining Ferrostaal. There, he set up and developed the department from scratch from 2008-2013 and grew it to one of the largest in-house departments of any private equity-owned company in Germany. As a result, the department has been operating almost exclusively without external counsel. At Ferrostaal he is currently implementing a global compliance management system, a task he will surely handle successfully given his long list of career highlights. Much talked about is still the €5bn GRAND (German Residential Asset Note Distributor) CMBS refinancing of Deutsche Annington in 2012/2013 which in spite of the financial crisis has been secured in a landmark case via an English scheme of arrangement. This legally complex solution saved the company from insolvency and protected thousands of jobs. Subsequently, Bütter has also successfully handled the company’s IPO. Not surprising, his standards for external counsel are high. They have to be ‘really better than in-house counsel, with more sector knowledge and giving truly comprehensive advice’. He says that law firms should ‘not charge for associates in the first 2-3 years as they often don’t add any value’.