The COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic led many ten­ants to re-ne­go­ti­ate their lease agree­ments, oth­ers in turn have stopped pay­ing rent or paid a re­duced amount.After over a year of the pan­dem­ic bring­ing vari­ous busi­ness...

Glob­al­isa­tion, polit­ic­al tur­bu­lence, changes in urb­an liv­ing pat­terns, in­creased di­git­isa­tion, shift­ing con­sumer be­ha­viour and flex­ible work­ing are just some of the is­sues that are trans­form­ing the de­mands...

A rad­ic­al re­think for glob­al prop­erty – and where we live, work and play As the real es­tate world emerges from the pan­dem­ic it is clear that all around us the urb­an land­scape is chan­ging. Many prop­er­ties are ob­sol­ete but also have ex­cit­ing fu­tures with new uses. Our town centres and cit­ies are un­der­go­ing fun­da­ment­al change – which all adds up to a world fo­cused on Re­pur­pos­ing Real Es­tate.Now in its tenth year, our Real Es­tate Thought Lead­er­ship series has covered top­ics such as the rise of in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment in the UK, the growth of tech, the fu­ture of the of­fice, the rap­id rise of in­dus­tri­al & lo­gist­ics and the ar­rival of build-to-rent as a ma­jor as­set class.This year, with the Gov­ern­ment hav­ing pub­lished its Lev­el­ling Up & Re­gen­er­a­tion Bill, we fo­cus on the fu­ture of towns and cit­ies not only in the UK but in a series of key glob­al in­vest­ment hubs: Ger­many, France, the Neth­er­lands, Spain, Singa­pore and the United Ar­ab Emir­ates.After two years of lock­downs, work­ing, shop­ping and so­cial­ising at home, a de­bate is ra­ging about the fu­ture of town and city centres. Will they re­cov­er? How will they look in ten years? Will urb­an­isa­tion go in­to re­verse? And what does this mean for the real es­tate world?In `Re­pur­pos­ing Real Es­tate’ we provide the first an­swers hav­ing polled more than 300 lead­ing in­dustry pro­fes­sion­als and al­most 15,000 glob­al con­sumers.The res­ults are fas­cin­at­ing: al­most a third of real es­tate is ear­marked for con­ver­sion – with re­tail and of­fices to hous­ing the most pop­u­lar choices. Con­sumers want more green and open space, hav­ing spent too long con­fined to their own homes.But the good news is that in­vestors, hav­ing come through the pan­dem­ic, are still con­fid­ent in real es­tate as an as­set class. The big changes will be in what prop­erty they in­vest in, mean­ing the places we live, work and play in may be very dif­fer­ent in the years to come.

CMS is pleased to an­nounce new heads for four of its in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pert­ise groups.All CMS law­yers work in cross-bor­der groups across more than 40 coun­tries world­wide that are struc­tured ac­cord­ing to...

Real es­tate in­vest­ment mar­kets re­main stable whilst buy­ers con­tin­ue to catch up in con­trac­tu­al risk al­loc­a­tion Lo­gist­ics as­sets more pop­u­lar than ever­De­mand from in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors reaches re­cord high ac­count­ing for 55% of deals, with most in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors still be­ing from with­in Europe­In­creased de­sire for se­cur­ity on the part of sellers con­tin­ued to be a fea­ture in 2021: share of trans­ac­tions in which the buy­er­'s pay­ment ob­lig­a­tions are se­cured reaches an­oth­er re­cord high­Buy­er-friendly trend in con­trac­tu­al risk al­loc­a­tion con­tin­ues as seller-friendly pro­vi­sions on lim­it­a­tion of li­ab­il­ity con­tin­ue to de­clineThe European real es­tate in­vest­ment mar­ket ap­pears to have largely re­covered from the con­sequences of the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic in 2021. Com­pared to the pan­dem­ic-stricken pre­vi­ous year, total in­vest­ment in­creased by around 15% to ap­prox­im­ately EUR 270 bil­lion, mark­ing a re­turn to the pre-crisis level.Lo­gist­ics as­sets per­formed par­tic­u­larly well last year, hav­ing be­come the fo­cus of in­vestors’ at­ten­tion due to their stable in­come flows and the on­go­ing growth of on­line shop­ping. De­mand from in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors was also up again in 2021, with in­tra-European trans­ac­tions be­ing the rule. 2021 also brought a new re­cord high in the num­ber of trans­ac­tions in which the buy­er­'s pay­ment ob­lig­a­tions were se­cured. With re­gard to con­tract design, the buy­er-friendly trend con­tin­ued, as re­flec­ted es­pe­cially by a de­crease in de min­imis and bas­ket clauses as well as caps. Lo­gist­ics as­sets more pop­u­lar than ever Of­fice prop­er­ties were a pop­u­lar as­set class in 2021 des­pite all the un­cer­tainty sur­round­ing the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic, al­though some mar­ket share was lost to lo­gist­ics and res­id­en­tial. The slight down­ward trend in of­fice trans­ac­tions handled by CMS seen in pre­vi­ous years non­ethe­less con­tin­ued, with their share de­clin­ing from 30% in 2020 to 19%. The reas­on for the de­clin­ing pro­por­tion of trans­ac­tions in the of­fice seg­ment is likely to be two-fold, com­bin­ing the lack of avail­able core prop­er­ties and the cur­rent un­cer­tainty around the im­pact of hy­brid ways of work­ing on de­mand for of­fice space.The res­id­en­tial and lo­gist­ics as­set classes on the oth­er hand were es­pe­cially pop­u­lar in 2021, each with a mar­ket share of 23%, com­pared to 22% and 19% re­spect­ively in 2020. One of the key factors for this trend was the stable in­come gen­er­ated by res­id­en­tial and lo­gist­ics prop­er­ties, which is par­tic­u­larly at­tract­ive to in­vestors. Lo­gist­ics as­sets ad­di­tion­ally be­nefited from the on­go­ing growth of on­line shop­ping, which was boos­ted re­cently by the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic and the re­lated clos­ure of re­tail shops, lead­ing to an in­creased need for de­liv­ery and dis­tri­bu­tion centres. High de­mand from in­ter­na­tion­al, mostly in­tra-European, in­vestors In­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors were more act­ive again last year: they ac­coun­ted for 55% of deals in 2021, com­pared to 43% in 2020. In 2020, in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors had a dif­fi­cult time, not least due to the im­pact of the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic. The as­so­ci­ated travel re­stric­tions meant that many in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors from oth­er con­tin­ents were forced to post­pone their planned trans­ac­tions. The prop­erty mar­ket seems to have re­covered from these ef­fects last year, with a new re­cord 55% of trans­ac­tions in­volving for­eign in­vestors. However, these for­eign in­vestors were mostly from with­in Europe; the num­ber of in­ter­con­tin­ent­al trans­ac­tions re­mained be­low pre-pan­dem­ic levels in 2021. Sellers seek se­cur­ity An in­creased de­sire for se­cur­ity on the part of sellers con­tin­ued to be a fea­ture in 2021. The share of trans­ac­tions in which steps were taken to en­sure that the buy­er met its fin­an­cial ob­lig­a­tions rose fur­ther in 2021. Sellers were gran­ted se­cur­ity in more than two thirds of cases (70%). This trend is con­sist­ent with 2020, when an in­creased de­sire for se­cur­ity on the part of sellers was already ap­par­ent. In con­trast, se­cur­ity was agreed in less than 50% of all trans­ac­tions in the peri­od from 2015 to 2018. The cur­rent high level is due in part to an in­creased de­sire for se­cur­ity on the part of sellers as a res­ult of the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic; they were of­ten un­cer­tain about the buy­er’s solvency go­ing for­ward. Buy­ers con­tin­ue to catch up in con­trac­tu­al risk al­loc­a­tion Buy­ers were able to catch up fur­ther in terms of con­trac­tu­al risk al­loc­a­tion. The pro­por­tion of trans­ac­tions with seller-friendly de min­imis clauses and bas­ket clauses (i.e. clauses that provide for a threshold or min­im­um lim­it for guar­an­tee claims by the buy­er) stag­nated or de­clined some­what com­pared with the pre­ced­ing years. In the pre­vi­ous year, after a no­tice­able de­cline, agree­ments aimed at lim­it­ing li­ab­il­ity were made in 44% (de min­imis clauses) and 41% (bas­ket clauses) of cases. The share of deals with a bas­ket clause fell fur­ther to 32% in 2021. As in 2020, a de min­imis clause was in­cluded in 44% of the trans­ac­tions ana­lysed. A sim­il­ar trend was seen in con­trac­tu­ally-agreed li­ab­il­ity caps. Whilst the pro­por­tion of trans­ac­tions with a cap was well over 60% in some cases in the years up to 2018, the per­cent­age of agree­ments with a con­trac­tu­ally-agreed max­im­um li­ab­il­ity fell slightly from 56% in 2020 to 50%.

1. Due di­li­gence costs for the pur­chase of real es­tate 1.1 Mu­ni­cip­al search Cost Ad­min­is­trat­ive fees for cop­ies or ex­cerpts from pub­lic re­gisters may vary re­gion­ally from EUR 10 to EUR 50 (per land...

A first glance sug­gests there were no ma­jor changes in the European in­vest­ment mar­ket in 2018, with the in­vest­ment volume be­ing roughly the same as in the pre­vi­ous year at around EUR 264bn. However...

Cross­ing bor­ders is both the theme of this year’s CMS An­nu­al Re­view and a guid­ing idea that we had when we es­tab­lished CMS 20 years ago. At that time, we de­cided to cre­ate a high-qual­ity, ex­pert and mul­tijur­is­dic­tion­al law firm. This Re­view shows what we’ve achieved over the last year in pur­suit of this goal.Since 1999, work­ing across bor­ders has be­come a daily task for all our law­yers. We are one of the most in­ter­na­tion­al law firms, with more than 70 of­fices in over 40 coun­tries. Our 4,800 leg­al ex­perts world­wide work as one team across jur­is­dic­tions, prac­tice areas and sec­tors to en­sure that you get clear, ac­tion­able and busi­ness-fo­cused ad­vice. You can read about our mul­tijur­is­dic­tion­al sup­port for cli­ents in the stor­ies through­out this An­nu­al Re­view. For ex­ample: an in­ter­na­tion­al CMS team ad­vised Ad­vance / Ne­w­house Part­ner­ship on its pur­chase of Stage En­ter­tain­ment, one of the world’s largest theatre pro­du­cers and own­ers. Our law­yers spe­cial­ising in cor­por­ate, me­dia, real es­tate, tax, em­ploy­ment, IP, com­pet­i­tion and bank­ing all worked on the trans­ac­tion.Glob­al­isa­tion con­tin­ues to im­pact the busi­ness en­vir­on­ment pro­foundly, as do the key is­sues on the glob­al agenda such as the US trade talks with China, Brexit and the con­sequences of cli­mate change. With our glob­al firm struc­ture and mind­set, we help you an­ti­cip­ate the prob­lems you face in your daily op­er­a­tions. On page 28, you can read what some of our part­ners around the world have told us about the chal­lenges their cli­ents are cur­rently fa­cing.An­oth­er ma­jor factor shap­ing our daily work is the im­pact of tech­no­logy on all busi­nesses. This year, our an­nu­al event in Da­v­os on the oc­ca­sion of the World Eco­nom­ic For­um (see page 18) fo­cused on how in­creased di­git­al­isa­tion is af­fect­ing con­ven­tion­al busi­ness mod­els.Today, in­tro­du­cing more ad­vanced tech­no­lo­gic­al tools in­to leg­al prac­tice is a must in or­der to meet cli­ents’ qual­ity and ef­fi­ciency ex­pect­a­tions. For CMS, it is about more than just us­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence soft­ware or di­git­al tools. To us, in­nov­a­tion means de­vel­op­ing tech­no­logy to of­fer our cli­ents new high-qual­ity ser­vices and to provide new ways of de­liv­er­ing all our leg­al of­fer­ings. Our scale and pres­ence across many jur­is­dic­tions, coupled with our deep un­der­stand­ing of cli­ent needs in their loc­a­tions, means that we are very well qual­i­fied to de­vise such solu­tions. On page 16, some of our key in­nov­at­ors de­scribe the ways in which our tech­no­logy is be­ne­fit­ting cli­ents.I hope you find some in­ter­est­ing and thought-pro­vok­ing stor­ies in this year’s An­nu­al Re­view and wish you an en­joy­able read. My col­leagues in the CMS ex­ec­ut­ive team and I are al­ways happy to hear from you if you have any com­ments or ques­tions.Cor­neli­us Brandi, Ex­ec­ut­ive Chair­man

Warsaw-lis­ted stock cor­por­a­tion Grupa Azoty S.A. has entered in­to a con­di­tion­al share pur­chase agree­ment for the ac­quis­i­tion of COMPO EX­PERT group, headquartered in Mün­ster, Ger­many, from XIO group...