Corporate / Commercial

Gen­er­al cor­po­rate and com­mer­cial prac­tice forms the ba­sis of Thümmel, Schütze & Part­ner’s work pro­file. The firm ad­vis­es clients on all as­pects of the law per­tain­ing to stock cor­po­ra­tions, lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­nies and part­ner­ships. The Ger­man stock cor­po­ra­tion law in par­tic­u­lar has been sub­ject to sev­er­al re­vi­sions, fo­cus­ing on more stock­hold­er and pub­lic con­trol, in which we have spe­cial­ized. Hence our ser­vices in cor­po­rate and com­mer­cial prac­tice main­ly com­prise prepa­ra­tion of gen­er­al stock­hold­ers’ meet­ings, de­fence against ac­tions to con­test res­o­lu­tions of gen­er­al stock­hold­ers’ meet­ings, cor­po­rate com­pli­ance, li­a­bil­i­ty of mem­bers of the man­age­ment and su­per­vi­so­ry boards and pre­ven­tive coun­selling ser­vices for com­pa­ny bod­ies.

The area of pro­fes­sion­al li­a­bil­i­ty of di­rec­tors and of­fi­cers (D&O li­a­bil­i­ty) has gained in­creas­ing recog­ni­tion and im­por­tance. Dis­con­tent­ed share­hold­ers and stock­hold­ers, new own­er­ship struc­tures af­ter changes in cor­po­rate con­trol, and new­ly ap­point­ed su­per­vi­so­ry boards or in­sol­ven­cy ad­min­is­tra­tors pose a threat to the man­age­ment of con­cerned com­pa­nies, and are not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. We pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive le­gal ser­vices to mem­bers of the board of di­rec­tors, man­ag­ing di­rec­tors and mem­bers of su­per­vi­so­ry boards, with a view to avert and chal­lenge the risks of li­a­bil­i­ty claims. In the pro­cess, we close­ly work with large D&O in­sur­ance com­pa­nies.

Like­wise we treat com­mer­cial­ly-re­lat­ed le­gal is­sues of mid-sized fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness­es, of­ten with com­plex own­er­ship struc­tures, and pro­vide strate­gic and re­li­able so­lu­tions. As mem­bers of su­per­vi­so­ry boards and ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tees of such cor­po­ra­tions, part­ners of the firm are aware of the is­sues with cor­po­rate own­er­ship struc­ture, and of the po­ten­tial for con­flicts of in­ter­est to arise in cor­po­rate mat­ters.