Corporate, Mergers & Acquisitions

Our team handles all types of M&A transactions (sales of majority and minority interests, LBOs, joint ventures, open bids, stressed/distressed M&A) for all types of clients (manufacturers, financial investors, families, etc.). 

Our lawyers – many of whom work regularly on cross-border deals – are able to promptly assist from the outset of your talks (letter of intent, confidentiality agreement), coordinate and conduct your due diligence reviews, and negotiate and formalize your various agreements (SPA, reps & warranties, financing contracts).

 Our team draws on the skills of lawyers from a wide range of practice areas (tax, labor, finance, competition, intellectual property, real estate, environment, etc.) who are used to working together on M&A transactions.

Our multidisciplinary team advises companies and investors on seed capital, expansion capital, leveraged financing (LBO, MBO, MBI, etc.) and turnaround capital transactions. We assist managers in the legal and tax structuring and negotiation of their management packages. We also support companies as they prepare to go public. 

Our financial engineering knowledge, combined with our lawyers’ sector-specific expertise, enables us to address a wide range of business sectors, including the innovation, healthcare, distribution, finance, energy, infrastructure, transport and real estate sectors. In response to complex situations, our team offers global, innovative and efficient solutions, with the support of Fidal's other practice areas and foreign partner firms.

Many factors must be considered when assisting a group in its structuring issues: size, business lines, labor context, management location, financial flows. The combined expertise of our corporate team and other specialized teams – particularly our tax, labor and economic law practices – enables us to liaise with the various players in your organization (CFO, HR Director, legal department, IT department, etc.) and offer you a comprehensive, coherent solution. 

A dedicated team of lawyers will thus support you in carrying out your internal reorganization transactions (mergers, asset contributions, management leases, etc.), as well as in analyzing your flows and setting up your intragroup agreements (management fee and cash-pooling agreements, delegations of power, etc.).

Fidal has deep experience in advising family businesses. Our lawyers know how to listen and go "beyond" the law to consider what really matters in developing a relevant strategy. 

They assist in drafting bespoke articles of association, shareholders' agreements and all other types of family arrangements, to prevent potential conflicts, resolve crisis situations, develop tools for intergenerational transmission, and manage the exit of family shareholders. In doing so, our corporate lawyers work closely with our tax lawyers and private client specialists. The combination of these skills, which is rare, if not unique, in the market, enables us to create innovative and sustainable solutions.

At Fidal, we believe that helping companies handle their corporate secretariat function deserves careful attention and involvement. The approval of annual financial statements, in particular, requires a rigorous and educating approach, and can help establish and maintain a climate of trust between management and shareholders. 

In the long run, the quality of the corporate secretariat function is one of the factors that fosters stakeholder buy-in to a company’s inevitable changes and facilitates third-party due diligence reviews. Our annual corporate secretariate work provides an ideal opportunity for discussing a wide range of issues with management. In fact, it is often during these meetings that major projects take shape.

Our team of specialists can address the legal needs of special business vehicles and groupings. We have proven expertise, for example, in cooperatives (across all fields of activity), semi-public companies and professional service firms (SELs, SCPs, associations, etc.), particularly in the healthcare and accounting sectors, as well as EIGs and joint ventures.

Governance and compliance go hand in hand. The structuring of a group's governance and decision-making channels should not be approached merely from an organizational perspective. Likewise, the design of a compliance program should incorporate the organization's governance structure. Our Governance & Compliance practice is at the heart of these issues of increasing importance to corporate executives and boards of directors. 

Our lawyers have in-depth experience in helping our clients enhance their corporate governance, internal control and risk management systems. Our dedicated team regularly conducts governance audits and risk identification and prevention engagements, particularly criminal and ethical risks (Sapin II, duty of care, CSR, FCPA, UK Bribery Act, etc.), for a wide range of listed and unlisted companies.