Leading multinationals and Belgian corporate and public clients rely on Stibbe‘s comprehensive employment and pensions expertise, which encompasses restructuring projects, harassment and discrimination claims, and payment disputes and is particularly concentrated in the area of collective dismissals. The team handles contentious and non-contentious dismissals in the context of corporate reorganisations and internal investigations and also assists with dismissal-related trade union negotiations. Elisabeth Matthys, who is a key contact for this line of work, maintains close relations with clients in the sports sector and co-leads the team with Jérôme Aubertin, who has ’exceptional knowledge’ of employment and social security litigation. Pensions and insurance expert Jan Proesmans is also recommended. Dieter Demuynck left the team in December 2022.
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Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
‘Elisabeth Matthys has excellent knowledge and is very constructive and solutions-oriented.’
‘Jérôme Aubertin is super-available and always drives you to the practical solution.’
‘The team is very reliable, has a high level of expertise and a pragmatic approach for clients which is very appreciable.’
‘I have been collaborating with Elisabeth Matthys for years now and she is an excellent attorney, very pragmatic in her approach to the files, and she has a very good knowledge of the local authorities which helps a lot to define the best strategy to recommend to clients.’
‘Stibbe is known for providing clients with tailored advice in a timely manner. The team focuses on complex strategic board-level employment law issues, which also include AI-related HR matters. Stibbe provides support to the clients on their way to becoming more sustainable or more ESG-oriented.’
‘My main contact is Jérôme Aubertin. I appreciate his exceptional knowledge, especially when it comes to transfer of undertakings, complex company restructurings, collective dismissals, closures and negotiations with union organisations. Apart from being an excellent lawyer and an expert in his field, he is also a very interesting person to speak to.’
Work highlights
- Advised Atos on its global restructuring through carving out its tech foundation services (now Atos) from its cloud IT Services (now Eviden).
- Acted for the Institute for Gender Equality of Women and Men as well as several (former) female players of the Belgian national volleyball team in a landmark case concerning transgressive behaviour.
- Assisted the Benelux Union with litigation before the Benelux Court of Justice versus its former Secretary General following a decision to stop automatically increasing his statutory Benelux pension based on indexation.
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Elisabeth Matthys, Jérôme Aubertin