15th edition of CMS European M&A Study is available now

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

The European Par­lia­ment's ap­prov­al of new crypto li­cens­ing reg­u­la­tions has been largely well-re­ceived by the in­dustry, mark­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant first step to­wards a uni­formly reg­u­lated di­git­al as­set mar­ket. The an­ti­cip­ated Mar­kets in Crypto As­sets (MiCA) reg­u­la­tion, de­signed to safe­guard con­sumers and main­tain fin­an­cial sta­bil­ity, is set to come in­to ef­fect in mid-2024, a move that has garnered ini­tial pos­it­ive re­sponses.While MiCA ap­plies ex­clus­ively in the European Uni­on (EU), its glob­al rel­ev­ance is un­deni­able. It po­s­i­tions the EU as a lead­er in man­aging this com­plex do­main, provid­ing the world with a reg­u­lat­ory frame­work for fur­ther re­fine­ment.Con­sequently, leg­al ex­perts and en­thu­si­asts from CMS spe­cial­ising in crypto and oth­er di­git­al as­sets have col­lab­or­ated to provide their per­spect­ives on vari­ous fa­cets of MiCA. This webpage serves as a re­pos­it­ory for art­icles en­cap­su­lat­ing the present state of af­fairs.For leg­al sup­port per­tain­ing to crypto and oth­er di­git­al as­sets, reach out to your reg­u­lar CMS li­ais­on or send an email to crypto@cmsleg­al.com.

24.05.2023

Law no. 2020-105 of 10 Feb­ru­ary 2020 on com­bat­ing wastage and on the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy (here­in­after "Anti-Wastage & Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Law"), which was one of the le­gis­lat­ive pri­or­it­ies for 2019/2020, should...

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity-linked fin­an­cing is still in its in­fancy, but it is already an in­teg­ral part of today's fin­an­cing land­scape and looks set to re­main in­to the fu­ture. Plenty of data and in­form­a­tion ex­ists, par­tic­u­larly on the KPIs of sus­tain­ab­il­ity-linked fin­an­cings, but it is scattered.In this guide we have com­piled, ana­lysed and com­men­ted on all as­pects of sus­tain­ab­il­ity-linked fin­an­cing to give you ac­cess to everything you need to know.

Spring/Sum­mer 2023

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...

The Life Sci­ences and Health­care Sec­tor is highly tech­no­logy-driv­en and an in­creas­ingly dy­nam­ic ap­proach is taken when ad­opt­ing busi­ness-crit­ic­al tech­no­lo­gies. This sec­tor’s above-av­er­age up­take in tech­no­logy is re­flec­ted in its pri­or­it­isa­tion of meas­ures against IT fail­ure. However, the sec­tor is of­ten un­der­prepared for tech­no­logy risks, with many busi­nesses still not hav­ing pro­cesses in place to man­age key risks des­pite cur­rent and fu­ture con­cerns around dis­putes arising from this area.This re­port is a deep dive in­to data first pro­duced for the re­port Tech­no­logy Trans­form­a­tion: Man­aging Risks in a Chan­ging Land­scape. This saw over 500 people sur­veyed from mul­tiple in­dus­tries across the world.Here we look in de­tail at the 75 re­spond­ents from the Life Sci­ences and Health­care sec­tor, and their per­spect­ives on the risks as­so­ci­ated with busi­ness-crit­ic­al tech­no­lo­gies, in­clud­ing emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies.Down­load the Tech­no­logy Trans­form­a­tion Life Sci­ences and Health­care re­port now to read about:Drivers of tech­no­logy ad­op­tion in the Life Sci­ences and Health­care sec­torNew risks emer­ging and tra­di­tion­al bar­ri­ers to risk man­age­ment­Cur­rent tech­no­logy risks in the Life Sci­ences and Health­care sec­tor­Fu­ture risks, in­clud­ing IP con­cerns and AIPre­ferred ap­proaches to tech­no­logy dis­pute res­ol­u­tion for the Life Sci­ences and Health­care sec­tor

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.

The in­sur­ance in­dustry is a ma­jor com­pon­ent of the glob­al eco­nomy, op­er­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­ally, to pro­tect people and busi­nesses against a wide range of risks. Es­tab­lish­ing and op­er­at­ing an in­sur­ance busi­ness...

With big deals fuel­ling re­cord levels of M&A activ­ity, a steady stream of in­nov­at­ive and dis­rupt­ive tech­no­lo­gies, new and in­creas­ingly com­plex reg­u­lat­ory chal­lenges and a thriv­ing start-up com­munity...