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

On 30 May 2023, the Dutch Sen­ate has ad­op­ted the Fu­ture of Pen­sions Act. On 30 May 2023, the bill and sub­mit­ted mo­tions were voted on and a ma­jor­ity was achieved. The plen­ary de­bate took place on 22 and 23 May 2023, with a total of 30 mo­tions sub­mit­ted. The Fu­ture of Pen­sions Act will come in­to ef­fect on 1 Ju­ly 2023, with a trans­ition peri­od un­til 1 Janu­ary 2027. Pen­sion funds will have un­til 1 Janu­ary 2028 to com­ply with the new law.The Fu­ture of Pen­sion Act brings sig­ni­fic­ant changes, in­clud­ing:Trans­ition from pen­sion en­ti­tle­ments to per­son­al pen­sion pots: the cur­rent defined be­ne­fits schemes will be re­placed by defined con­tri­bu­tion schemes.Ab­ol­i­tion of the uni­form premi­um: the premi­um con­tri­bu­tion in the new defined con­tri­bu­tion schemes will be­come age-in­de­pend­ent. Each par­ti­cipant, re­gard­less of age, will re­ceive the same premi­um per­cent­age (a flat-rate premi­um). The max­im­um premi­um is 30% of the pen­sion­able salary.Trans­ition­al ar­range­ment for cur­rent age-de­pend­ent premi­ums: em­ploy­ers who already have a defined con­tri­bu­tion ar­range­ment with an age-de­pend­ent premi­um be­fore 1 Ju­ly 2023, can use a trans­ition­al ar­range­ment. They can con­tin­ue the ex­ist­ing pen­sion scheme for par­ti­cipants who are em­ployed be­fore 1 Janu­ary 2027.Min­im­um entry age of 18: the stat­utory min­im­um entry age for the pen­sion scheme will be lowered from 21 to 18 years as of 1 Janu­ary 2024.Changes to part­ner and orphan pen­sions: the amount of in­sured part­ner and orphan pen­sions will be stand­ard­ized and ex­pressed as a per­cent­age of the salary.Em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ees will face chal­lenges, as non-com­pli­ance with the le­gis­la­tion from 1 Janu­ary 2027 will res­ult in tax­a­tion and sig­ni­fic­ant fin­an­cial con­sequences. Trade uni­ons and works coun­cils will also need to take ac­tion. CMS can provide guid­ance and as­sist­ance in this pro­cess. Please con­tact us for any ques­tions or con­cerns. For more de­tails, vis­it our pre­vi­ously pub­lished art­icle. Con­tact Should you wish to re­ceive more in­form­a­tion or if you have any ques­tions re­gard­ing the im­pact of the new pen­sion law on your busi­ness, please con­tact us.

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.

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...

In 2019, the Dutch gov­ern­ment to­geth­er with the em­ploy­ee and em­ploy­er or­gan­iz­a­tions, con­cluded an agree­ment on sig­ni­fic­ant changes to the cur­rent pen­sion law. This agree­ment reg­u­lates the re­vi­sion of the second-pil­lar pen­sion in the Neth­er­lands. The second-pil­lar pen­sion con­tains the sup­ple­ment­ary pen­sions that in­di­vidu­als build up as part of their em­ploy­ment as em­ploy­ees. Fu­ture of Pen­sions Act Cur­rently, the new pen­sion law (the 'Fu­ture of Pen­sions Act') is not yet ad­op­ted. The Dutch Sen­ate will dis­cuss and (most likely) vote on the new pen­sion law at the end of May 2023. Based on the cur­rent pro­pos­al for the new law and the tim­ing of the vot­ing in the Dutch Sen­ate, the new pen­sion law may be ad­op­ted by the end of May 2023 and en­acted by 1 Ju­ly 2023. Once the law is in ef­fect, the dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers (uni­ons, em­ploy­ers, em­ploy­ees and pen­sion pro­viders) will have 3.5 years (un­til 1 Janu­ary 2027) to ad­just the ex­ist­ing pen­sion schemes to the new le­gis­la­tion. Cent­ral em­ploy­ment con­di­tion The most sig­ni­fic­ant change in the pro­posed new pen­sion law is that the pen­sion ac­cru­al will be dif­fer­ent from the cur­rent sys­tem. Every em­ploy­ee par­ti­cip­at­ing in a pen­sion scheme will start build­ing up a per­son­al pen­sion cap­it­al through a defined con­tri­bu­tion scheme. Defined be­ne­fit pen­sion schemes will no longer ex­ist. Hence, the pen­sion con­tri­bu­tion will be­come the cent­ral em­ploy­ment con­di­tion. Fur­ther­more, the pen­sion con­tri­bu­tion will be uni­form for all ages and will not de­vi­ate per age (the so-called flat con­tri­bu­tion). After 1 Janu­ary 2027, the sys­tem of de­vi­at­ing pen­sion con­tri­bu­tion based on age may only be con­tin­ued for em­ploy­ees who were already em­ployed and par­ti­cip­at­ing in the pen­sion scheme with such sys­tem, based on the trans­ition­al law.As part of these (and more) changes, uni­ons, em­ploy­ers, em­ploy­ees and pen­sion pro­viders should trans­ition to the new pen­sion sys­tem and ex­ist­ing agree­ments must be ad­jus­ted to com­ply with the new law. Com­pli­ance with the new pen­sion law re­quires a trans­ition plan in which all stake­hold­ers should be in­cluded.We are happy to as­sist you with set­ting up such a trans­ition plan and provid­ing guid­ance on this new pen­sion law once it is ad­op­ted. Con­tact Should you wish to re­ceive more in­form­a­tion or if you have any ques­tions re­gard­ing the im­pact of the new pen­sion law on your busi­ness, please con­tact us.

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.

1. In­tro­duc­tion Un­der Dutch law, the parties that have rights un­der a con­tract are those that are ex­pressly party to it. These are the poli­cy­hold­er and the parties en­titled to cov­er­age in ac­cord­ance...