Counsel

Dr. Anna-Maja Schaefer, LL.M.

Rechtsanwältin

Languages

German
English
Spanish

Social media

Anna-Maja is a finance lawyer specialising in sustainable finance. She advises companies and investment houses on the implementation of sustainable finance regulation and reporting, including the EU-Taxonomy, the EU-Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), MiFID II and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

Anna-Maja is a member of the CMS-sustainability initiative and co-responsible for CMS first sustainability report, published in December 2022.

She regularly publishes on sustainable finance regulation on the firm's blog and journals and is a frequently invited speaker on sustainability issues (e.g. at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management) and a lecturer in sustainability management at Haufe Akademie.

After working in an international commercial law firm and as in-house lawyer at a well-know recycling company Anna-Maja joined CMS in 2012 and became a counsel in 2021.

Publications

EU-Kommission will Unternehmen entlasten: Was wird aus den Berichtspflichten? at beck-aktuell
Sustainable Finance: Mehr Daten sind der Schlüssel zu Transparenz, in ESG, 2023, S. 98 (with Constanze Winkler)
Was tun bei Greenwashing Klagen? Interview in der Lebensmittel Praxis, September 2022
Nachhaltigkeitspräferenzen in der Anlageberatung, Interview in ESG-report, February 2022
ESG-Compliance: EU-Regulierung stellt Unternehmen vor komplexe Herausforderungen, Guest article in Compliance and in the Forum for Business Ethics (with Philipp Melzer), September 2021
Wege zu einer nachhaltigeren Realwirtschaft, Börsenzeitung (with Philipp Melzer), August 2021
Das autonome internationale Insolvenzrecht Spaniens im Vergleich zum deutschen Recht, Peter Lang Verlag, 2009

Lectures list

CMS Webinar "Omnibus I – Mehr Wettbewerb, weniger Nachhaltigkeit?" | 6 March 2025
Sustainability reporting and communication, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management 23 April 2024 (mit Katharina Knoll)
Sustainability Compliance, Masterclass, Haufe Akademie, 5 March 2024 (mit Katharina Knoll)
50 Shades of Green – Greenwashing rechtlich und fachlich greifen (Veranstaltung vom Start-up-Verband in Berlin), 28 November 2023
Sustainability – Regulatorische Anforderungen an Banken, Veranstaltung mit Prof. Dr. Dietz von der Deutschen Bundesbank bei CMS Frankfurt/Main (Moderation), 26 September 2023

Education

Master in Internation Business and Commerical Law (LL.M.) at Bangor University
PhD at the University of Jena
Recognition of German lawyer title by the Spanish Ministry of Justice in Madrid
Second state examination in law and trainee lawyer at Duesseldorf Higher Regional Court
First state examination at Cologne Higher Regional Court

Practice Areas

Banking Law and Regulation Finance Sustainable Finance ESG

Insights by Anna-Maja

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Event Germany

OMNIBUS - 60 minutes to get a full picture

11 Mar 2025

Legal Update Germany

European Commission publishes European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS)

21 Aug 2023 5 min read

Legal Update Germany

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has been adopted

24 Nov 2022 6 min read

News Germany

A global overview of coronavirus (COVID-19) related moratorium on corporate and retail loans

14 Apr 2020 1 min read