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29/05/2023
CMS European Private Equity Study 2023
We are very pleased to share with you the second edi­tion of the CMS European Private Equity Study 2023.This study ana­lyses hun­dreds of Private Equity deals that we ad­vised on in 2022 and pre­vi­ous years, provid­ing unique in­sights in­to mar­ket trends and dif­fer­ences between private equity and trade deals. Key find­ings: Deal activ­ity re­mained strong un­til Q3 2022, but ex­per­i­enced a sig­ni­fic­ant drop in Q4.New in­vest­ments ac­coun­ted for 85% of PE deals ana­lysed, with few­er exits and sec­ond­ary buy-outs in 2022 com­pared to 2021.Bid­ding pro­cesses de­creased in 2022, po­ten­tially due to less in­volve­ment of PE funds on the sell-side.Entry in­to new mar­kets was the most com­mon deal driver (64% of deals), while di­git­al­isa­tion was no longer a deal driver­Tech­no­logy, me­dia, and tele­coms (TMT) was the busiest sec­tor, fol­lowed by Real Es­tate & Con­struc­tion and life sci­ences.Use of MAC clauses de­creased to 10% in 2022, com­pared to 15% in 2021.Few­er FDI ap­provals or clear­ances were sought in 2022 (8%) com­pared to 2021 (15%).W&I in­sur­ance played a prom­in­ent role in PE M&A trans­ac­tions, in­creas­ing with deal value.Locked box mech­an­isms for set­ting pur­chase price were pre­ferred in 80% of PE deals, while pur­chase price ad­just­ments de­creased.Earn-out pro­vi­sions in­creased over­all in 2022 but were more com­mon in smal­ler deals than high­er value deals.ESG con­sid­er­a­tions have not yet fea­tured in leg­al due di­li­gence or trans­ac­tion doc­u­ments.Man­age­ment in­cent­ive schemes saw short­er vest­ing peri­ods, in­creased man­age­ment al­loc­a­tion, but tightened leav­er pro­vi­sions.Over­all, there were buy­er-friendly de­vel­op­ments in some deal met­rics, such as the use of "tip­ping" bas­kets.
26/05/2023
CMS ad­vises Co­logne-based SaaS start-up Sastri­fy on USD 32 mil­lion Series...
Co­logne – Co­logne-based SaaS start-up Sastri­fy has com­pleted a Series B round of fin­an­cing and raised a total of USD 32 mil­lion. In ad­di­tion to new in­vestors such as ven­ture cap­it­al in­vestors En­deit...
26/05/2023
Per­form­ing ser­vices in a de­cent­ral­ised man­ner un­der Mi­CAR
At the end of April 2023, the European par­lia­ment de­cided on a uni­form reg­u­la­tion of crypto as­sets across the EU by vot­ing on the MiCA reg­u­la­tion (i.e. mar­kets in crypto-as­sets). The in­ten­ded in­nov­a­tions...
25/05/2023
North Sea Strikes and Force Ma­jeure
The latest in a series of strikes by oil & gas work­ers in the North Sea con­tin­ues to test the op­er­a­tion and ef­fic­acy of force ma­jeure (“FM”) pro­vi­sions in oil and gas in­dustry con­tracts.There is no...
24/05/2023
The new Ger­man En­ergy Ef­fi­ciency Act – "En­ergy ef­fi­ciency first" now also...
The Fed­er­al Cab­in­et has presen­ted a draft for a new Ger­man En­ergy Ef­fi­ciency Act. This will trans­pose the up­dated EU En­ergy Ef­fi­ciency Dir­ect­ive in­to na­tion­al law.In Ju­ly 2021, the European Com­mis­sion...
24/05/2023
What em­ploy­ers must be aware of when us­ing AI and how AI can re­volu­tion­ise...
The hype cre­ated by the rise of gen­er­at­ive ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) is enorm­ous and con­tin­ues to this day. In the work­place, it is primar­ily text-based large lan­guage mod­els (LLMs) that will make...
24/05/2023
De­Fi and MiCA: How much de­cent­ral­isa­tion is enough?
The European Uni­on Coun­cil has re­cently ad­op­ted a reg­u­la­tion on Mar­kets in Crypto-As­sets (MiCA) that ap­plies to crypto-as­sets, their is­suers and ser­vice pro­viders, and cov­ers a range of ser­vices that...
22/05/2023
Who watches the watch­ers? – Ger­man court grants an anti-anti-anti-suit...
In a 2 May 2023 judg­ment, the High­er Re­gion­al Court of Hamm is­sued an in­junc­tion en­join­ing the Ger­man in­vestors, RWE In­nogy GmbH and RWE In­nogy Aersa SAU, from pur­su­ing court pro­ceed­ings out­side the EU...
22/05/2023
Europe-wide ana­lys­is on the fifth an­niversary of the GDPR re­veals data...
European data pro­tec­tion au­thor­it­ies im­posed fines totalling over 2.7 bil­lion euros in more than 1,500 pub­licly known cases for vi­ol­a­tions of the Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion, which has been in...
21/05/2023
GDPR En­force­ment Track­er Re­port
A warm wel­come... ...to the fourth edi­tion of the GDPR En­force­ment Track­er Re­port – the an­niversary edi­tion cel­eb­rat­ing five years of GDPR.In the five years since the GDPR be­came ap­plic­able its power­ful frame­work for im­pos­ing fines has cer­tainly helped to raise aware­ness and en­cour­age com­pli­ance ef­forts – just as the European le­gis­lat­or in­ten­ded. At the same time, the risk of fines of up to EUR 20 mil­lion or 4% of a com­pany’s glob­al an­nu­al turnover can also lead to fear and re­luct­ance or ig­nor­ance about com­pli­ance is­sues.We still be­lieve that facts are bet­ter than fear.This is why we con­tinu­ously up­date our list of pub­licly known fines in the GDPR  En­force­ment Track­er and star­ted the GDPR En­force­ment Track­er Re­port as an an­nu­al deep dive ap­proach to provide you with more in­sights in­to the world of GDPR fines.As in the three pre­vi­ous edi­tions, the GDPR En­force­ment Track­er Re­port starts with the Ex­ec­ut­ive Sum­mary (also avail­able as a PDF ver­sion), fol­lowed by the “Num­bers and Fig­ures” sec­tion and the “En­force­ment In­sights per busi­ness sec­tor” (also in­clud­ing the over­arch­ing em­ploy­ment cat­egory. The “En­force­ment In­sights per coun­try” provide back­ground on the spe­cif­ic en­force­ment frame­work un­der na­tion­al law. Some re­marks on our meth­od­o­logy can be found at the very end of the re­port.
19/05/2023
Ten things every in­surer should know in Ger­many
1. In­tro­duc­tion An in­surer can un­der­take in­sur­ance activ­it­ies in the Fed­er­al Re­pub­lic of Ger­many with an in­sur­ance li­cence gran­ted by the Fed­er­al Fin­an­cial Su­per­vis­ory Au­thor­ity (BaFin). BaFin can grant...
18/05/2023
European Com­mis­sion's pub­lic con­sulta­tion on the ex­ten­sion of op­er­at­ing...
The European Com­mis­sion has re­cently sub­mit­ted for pub­lic con­sulta­tion its draft com­mu­nic­a­tion ex­tend­ing the trans­ition­al peri­od for op­er­at­ing aid that can be gran­ted to re­gion­al air­ports un­der the 2014...