M&A and Joint Ventures

“To provide authentic cross-border advice, one must personally experience and overcome the challenges of cross-border business every day“

Sharing these own experiences with clients gives them the confidence that LEXPORTATEU’s solutions based on a careful selection of the legal framework best suited for each client are also legally reliable and practical in real-world application

„To be legally considered as a cross-border corporate group, one need not bear the name Apple, Amazon, IKEA, or SAP – why this structuring option is particularly worthwhile for SMEs“

 

Traditional cross-border corporate groups are typically characterised by the establishment of a subsidiary under the respective local law in each jurisdiction in which the group operates. Such structures are not only fraught with legal risks due to the diversity of applicable legal systems across the group entities, but they also hinder the implementation of a uniform management and organizational framework for the cross-border group, resulting in substantial costs.

However, within the EU and EEA, extensive options exist for the choice of applicable law to each comany of the group. LEXPORTATEU has therefore developed models specifically tailored to cross-border corporate groups, enabling the harmonisation of the legal form of individual group entities. This approach significantly mitigates the incompatibilities and divergences between various legal systems and reduces the complexity of the cross-border group to the level of a “simple” purely domestic corporate structure. As a result, both liability risks and the costs of ongoing external legal counsel abroad are substantially reduced.

We thus pave the way for you, even as a medium-sized enterprise, to expand into other EU and EEA markets without being deterred by prohibitive cost burdens or liability risks. The earlier, the better – for even the aforementioned giants once started small and conquered new markets by being the first to enter and now dominate them…

 

Traditional cross-border corporate group structures are characterized by the fact that the group establishes a subsidiary in each country of operation according to the local law of that country. Such structures carry risks due to the differences in the legal systems applicable to each group company. Moreover, they make unified management and organization of the cross-border group difficult and lead to high costs. However, within the EU and EEA, there are now extensive options to choose the preferred legal system. Therefore, LEXPORTATEU has developed models specifically for cross-border corporate groups to standardize the legal form of the individual group companies so that the existing differences and incompatibilities between various legal systems can largely be avoided. This reduces the complexity of the cross-border group from a corporate law perspective to the uniformity of a “simple” purely national corporation. This approach lowers both liability risks and the costs of ongoing external legal advice abroad.

We therefore clear the way for you, as a mid-sized company, to expand into other markets within the EU and EEA without being held back by prohibitive costs or liability risks. The earlier you start, the better! After all, even those mentioned at the beginning once started small and entered new markets by being the first to establish themselves and today they dominate…

“How much I would give now if our company had already had its own contract templates or general terms and conditions back then.“

 

Unfortunately, we often hear this statement from clients who turn to LEXPORTATEU after being sued in another country or having to file such a lawsuit or arbitration there to enforce their own claims. Depending on the jurisdiction, this can lead to economically unreasonable duration of proceedings, often lasting several years per instance, and can become unnecessarily costly with unpredictable outcomes—especially when the jurisdiction and the applicable law do not align.

 

Such problems can usually be easily prevented or reduced by including a jurisdiction and choice of law clause. And even if, in individual cases, you are unable to enforce your own contract templates and general terms and conditions, having your own templates at least ensures that those of the opposing party are not effectively agreed upon either. This often represents the only realistic way especially when dealing with powerful contractual partners to sign an otherwise legally unfavorable contract while still legally preventing the crippling of your own company.