We assist you in your M&A transactions, our ability to innovate and anticipate has been at the heart of our transactional activity for over fifty years.

Our research and studies on market developments and on numerous sectors of activity allow us to accurately apprehend any strategic operations you may need in order to provide you with effective support that goes beyond simple legal advice.

Our practice, in France and abroad, covers various economic sectors (finance, health, services, industry, energy, media, etc.) and all types of strategic operations of external growth or reorganization of groups and companies.

• Main fields of activity:
  • Strategic external growth cases;
  • Mainly mid cap and large cap transactions.
• Key areas of expertise:
  • Acquisition and disposal of shares and businesses;
  • Carve-out, including cross-border;
  • Joint ventures and partnerships;
  • Corporate governance;
  • Acquisitions and disposals of participating interests;
  • Mergers, demergers, restructurings;
  • Shareholders’ agreements;
  • Due Diligence.
• A recognized cross-border expertise:
  • More than 50% of our M&A transactions involve an international party;
  • Jeantet advises companies involving French and foreign targets.
• Support of a full service firm:
  • Employment and tax law, environment, real estate, litigation, Commercial, Compliance...
  • Notifications, merger control in France and abroad;
  • Foreign investments.

Tailor-made and innovative advice: Development of an offensive strategy designed for you and your company. Jeantet is strongly involved in compliance and anti-corruption issues (Sapin II law).

A partner at the heart of its clients’ realities: Regular speakers at conferences, our lawyers are regularly consulted on major reform projects. Jeantet is strongly involved in compliance and anti-corruption issues (Sapin II law).

• Complex corporate law: issuance of complex securities, capital restructuring, joint ventures, social economy (SESS, ESUS), internal exchanges and share buybacks.
• European company law: European company, cross-border mergers and demergers.
• Corporate governance: pacts, charters, compensation policies (say on pay).

Our Private Equity practice differentiates itself by its economic vision of your needs, complemented by a specific know-how, which are decisive factors for a rigorous structuring of your operations. The diversified experience and training of our lawyers, whether in mergers and acquisitions, financing or taxation, form the solid foundations of our practice.

• Main fields of activity:
  • Majority LBO;
  • MBO;
  • Venture capital;
  • Acquisition financing;
  • Refinancing and recapitalization operations;
  • Management Package;
  • Build-up operations;
  • Tax structuring;
• A recognized cross-border expertise
  • Our clients include major international and French stakeholders, such as investment funds, banks, mezzanine funds, shareholders and managers.

• Initial public offering: Public offering, private placement or direct listing on Euronext Paris, Euronext Growth Paris or Euronext Access Paris: structuring of the transaction, drafting of the prospectus, filing with the AMF ;
• Securities offerings: Capital increase with cancellation or maintenance of preferential subscription rights, issue of complex securities (e.g. OCABSA, OCEANE, ORNANE, equity-lines) ;
• Public offers: Friendly or unsolicited public offers (purchase, exchange, withdrawal), delisting, takeover strategies (concerted action), anti-takeover defense ;
• Investment in listed companies: Crossing thresholds and declarations of intent, control issues, other reporting obligations, prevention of market abuse ;
• Assistance in corporate law and stock exchange law: General shareholders’ meetings, regulated information, share-based incentive plans for executives and employees, identification and management of regulated information ;
• Corporate governance: Structuring and organization of governance, executive compensation, organization and operation of boards, CSR, assistance in crisis situations and image risk ;
• Trust: Setting up of management trusts allowing in particular the restructuring of debts of all kinds. Innovative tool allowing the repayment of the debt by the market through successive capital increases generated by the exercise of warrants allocated free of charge to the trustee (equitization process). The newly created shares are then resold on the market and the proceeds are returned to the original creditor.

Navigating foreign investment controls: a strategic and integrated approach

The multiplication of foreign investment screening regimes, their continuous expansion into new sectors, from defense throughout critical infrastructures to healthcare and new technologies, as well as increasing coordination and emulation among authorities across the European Union and beyond have made foreign investment screening processes a key element of many M&A transactions, from the perspective of transaction certainty and deal economics, along merger control and more recently the European foreign subsidies regulation.

An experienced, multidisciplinary team

Our Foreign Investment team, made up of experts in mergers & acquisitions, competition law, international trade/ sanctions and public law, mobilizes the full range of our firm's expertise to provide targeted, pragmatic advice.

Our track record in M&A and long-standing experience advising foreign investors with regard to strategic investments in France and French clients in their investments abroad allow us to anticipate and appropriately address regulatory hurdles and business impacts linked to foreign investment screening processes, be it in the context of investments primarily aimed into France or multi-jurisdictional transactions.

Expertise valued by the authorities

We maintain continuous and constructive working relations with the Office for Screening of Foreign Investments into France at the Ministry of Economy and other relevant stakeholders.. Our lawyers are regularly consulted on legislative developments, enabling us to anticipate risks and shape effective notification strategies.

A global vision of screening mechanisms

Via our closely knit network of partner firms with a truly global reach, we are fully equipped to conduct regulatory analysis and filings across any required jurisdictions (EU Member States having implemented screening mechanisms, the US (CFIUS), the UK National Security and Investment Act and beyond), either under French regulations or as lead counsel coordinating filings across all jurisdictions.

Our support also covers related issues, including national security compliance, export control/ sanctions and procurement/ government contracts.

Jeantet works on behalf of its individual and corporate clients beginning at the initial AMF investigation stage, and supports them through any administrative proceedings conducted by AMF’s Board and Sanctions Committee. These proceedings are often based on a criticism with regard to the timing or quality of publicly reported information, or even the alleged existence of market abuses (dissemination of false information, insider trading violations, market manipulation, etc.)

On a broader level, we assist our clients (issuers, majority and minority shareholders, investors, company executives, financial brokers) throughout the course of any litigations featuring a “stock market” dimension, meaning those with public shareholders, shareholder disputes (abuse by majority shareholders, governance issues), and even specific regulations (takeover bids, AMF Doctrine, “golden parachutes,” etc.).

For all of these disputes, we have developed an expertise based on the decompartmentalization of jurisdictions (corporate law, stock exchange regulations, civil and/or criminal proceedings) in conjunction with the firm's other teams (financial regulation, labor law, collective proceedings). To cite one example,

we have submitted to the Constitutional Council a Priority Question of Constitutionality (QPC) based on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 in a case involving the crossing of thresholds by an action in concert.

The takeover of a company placed in the context of insolvency proceedings cannot be handled under M&A rules. Our cross-functional approach to cases and the expertise of our Restructuring and M&A lawyers enable us to assist our clients in dealing with these specific situations and the complex issues that arise therefrom.

We combine our knowledge of complex transactions with a strong litigation practice and provide our support and expertise to you, executives and companies, by developing a personalized legal strategy to defend your interests.

• Conflicts between shareholders;
• Liability of directors for mismanagement;
• Post-acquisition litigation;
• Stock market litigation.