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

Over a re­l­at­ively short peri­od of time, the im­ple­ment­a­tion of ESG (en­vir­on­ment­al, so­cial and gov­ernance) as­pects in com­merce has grown to be­come a stra­tegic pri­or­ity at man­age­ment level. While the sub­stance of ESG is likely to evolve in the com­ing years, the un­der­ly­ing im­pulse for busi­nesses to make a so­cial con­tri­bu­tion, and not just an eco­nom­ic one, is here to stay. In es­sence, it is about main­tain­ing and re­in­for­cing the so­cial li­cence of a busi­ness to op­er­ate in a rap­idly chan­ging world. As a res­ult, ESG goes to the heart of every busi­ness. Fu­ture-look­ing com­pan­ies Not all as­pects of E, S and G are pri­or­it­ies for all com­pan­ies. Com­pan­ies will care­fully have to weigh which ESG as­pects they want to fo­cus on. For that reas­on, it is in­struct­ive to ob­serve or­gan­isa­tions that ap­proach ESG in a rig­or­ous, strategy-driv­en, so­cially at­tuned way. McKin­sey calls these or­gan­isa­tions ‘for­ward-look­ing com­pan­ies’. They make ESG in­trins­ic to their strategy by de­lib­er­ately ap­ply­ing those ESG as­pects that con­nect to the core of their busi­ness. For­ward-look­ing com­pan­ies also pro­mote com­pet­i­tion by stand­ing out and us­ing good cor­por­ate cit­izen­ship to con­trib­ute to find­ing solu­tions to ex­ist­en­tial chal­lenges, such as cli­mate change. Dis­tin­guish­ing role Whatever your com­pany's am­bi­tion, you will al­ways need to com­ply with the ESG reg­u­la­tions, in­clud­ing those on en­vir­on­ment­al le­gis­la­tion, la­bour-law is­sues and gov­ernance. But for­ward-look­ing com­pan­ies take it one step fur­ther, and usu­ally raise the bar by fo­cus­ing on cer­tain as­pects of ESG in which they can play a lead­ing or dis­tin­guish­ing role. Ideally, this will also mo­tiv­ate sim­il­ar com­pan­ies to take a com­par­able route when it comes to ESG. Roadmap to so­cial profit This ESG spe­cial pub­lic­a­tion provides com­pany law­yers a con­cise over­view of the most im­port­ant ESG reg­u­la­tions, as well as con­crete tools to give man­agers bet­ter ad­vice in the field of ESG. Vari­ous as­pects and ele­ments of a com­pany will be dis­cussed: from the dis­tri­bu­tion chain to com­mer­cial prop­erty, from sus­tain­able fin­an­cing is­sues to the de­sired level of di­versity and in­clus­iv­ity with­in the pop­u­la­tion, and from gov­ernance to ESG lit­ig­a­tion.

The CMS Cor­por­ate/M&A Group is pleased to launch the 15th edi­tion of the European M&A Study