Bird & Bird

Lourdes Ayala is a Partner and Head in Bird & Bird's Corporate and M&A department in the Madrid office. She specializes in the life sciences, tech & comms, and retail & consumer sectors with a business oriented and hands-on approach. She advises institutional and industrial clients on complex mergers and acquisitions whether national or cross-border transactions, joint ventures, acquisition of majority or minority stakes, share deals and asset deals. She has broad expertise in venture capital, advising both the investors, venture capital funds, corporate venture capital, business angels and others, as well as the target high growth companies on financing rounds and investments throughout their lifecycle. She also offers expertise in transactions with a strong real estate element, as well as in corporate restructuring, mergers and spin offs.

Antonio is an experienced lawyer in Bird & Bird's Intellectual Property/Dispute Resolution department in the Madrid office. His practice covers all IP-related matters including patents (in mechanical, chemical, electrical and biotechnology patent areas) as well as designs, trade marks, domain names, copyright and unfair competition, with particular expertise in trade secrets. He has a broad practice, covering all areas of IP, advertising, unfair competition and trade secrets and he advises clients on the creation and evaluation of their IP, through exploitation, defense and enforcement where necessary. He also has wide experience in trade secrets litigation. He specializes in advising retail and consumer-facing clients, particularly global fashion brands and also consumer goods businesses and food and beverage producers. This experience has come from being a key legal adviser to some of the largest leading fashion retailers in Europe over a 20 year period. In recent years he has been handling complex disputes relating to IP rights. Because of his strong litigation profile, he also works with clients in litigation and dispute resolution outside of the realms of IP. This has included the renowned Musaat case, on which he obtained a successful result for the client and which is one of the most important anti-trust enforcement actions in Spain.