The Firm’s Frankfurt office opened in 1995, a natural outgrowth of our long-standing work for clients in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The German law team was established in 2001 with the arrival of two leading German lawyers as partners of the Firm, and the Frankfurt legal staff now comprises U.S., German and dual-qualified lawyers. The recognized strength of our German law team bolsters our position as a key player in the German legal market.

Our Frankfurt-based lawyers offer specialist expertise in particular in:

• capital markets/securities, 
• mergers & acquisitions (including private equity), and 
• financings (ranging from acquisition finance to restructuring advice).

The Frankfurt team advises industrial companies, private equity and other investors as well as financial institutions, especially on capital market transactions, mergers & acquisitions (public and private, national and international), restructuring and complex acquisition finance transactions and general corporate law questions.

Our consistent strengths in capital markets, M&A and financing transactions and our extensive experience in all of these areas has enabled our Frankfurt team to work on the most complex and high-profile transactions that require cross-disciplinary knowledge and perfect transaction management.

Recent headline transactions handled by our Frankfurt-based team include the following:

Capital Markets/Securities

• Consistently advised on the largest and highest-profile IPOs in Germany, including by Tognum and HHLA (2007), Symrise and Wacker (2006), Premiere (2005), Deutsche Postbank and Wincor Nixdorf (2004), the largest German IPOs of their respective years 
• Very strong practice in rights offerings (e.g., Deutsche Postbank (2008), Merck (2007), Fresenius (2005)) and equity linked transactions (e.g., KfW’s exchangeable bond offerings in Deutsche Telekom (2008) and Deutsche Post (2004))
• Also very active in Austria, advising the underwriters in the record-breaking IPO of STRABAG (2007), and acting as international transaction counsel in the IPO of Österreichische Post (2006), among others 
• In Switzerland, represented UBS on German/BaFin-related issues in connection with its CHF 15.6 billion rights offering (2008), and Partners Group in its CHF 555.1 million IPO (2006) 
• Represented the issuer in ongoing global bond offerings by Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau and Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank, and the underwriters in the billion-dollar notes offerings of Deutsche Telekom, most recently in 2008

M&A/Private Equity

• Representation of Commerzbank in its $14.4 billion acquisition of Dresdner Bank (2008) 
• Represented RHJ International in its attempt to acquire IKB Deutsche Industriebank (2008) 
• Represented Neptune Orient Lines in its attempt to acquire Hapag-Lloyd (2008)
• Represented Interhyp in the $649 million acquisition by ING DIRECT (2008) 
• In Switzerland, represented Swisscom in its $6.3 billion acquisition of FASTWEB (2007) 
• In Austria, represented Österreichische Post, a member of a consortium led by Cerberus Capital Management and including Wüstenrot & Württembergische, Generali Holding Vienna and a group of private investors, in the $4.2 acquisition of Bank für Arbeit und Wirtschaft (BAWAG) (2007)

Financings/Restructurings

• Represented Premiere in its restructuring of the company’s financing structure, including two rights offerings (2008/2009) 
• Represented Whitehall in the financing of numerous German acquisitions, including a variety of commercial real estate portfolios (2007) 
• Represented the arrangers in the refinancing of Honsel Group (2007) 
• Represented Philips and NXP in the $10.3 billion acquisition of NXP by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (2006)

For more about S&C’s practice in Europe, please click here.