International Briefing October 2023

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Welcome to the October issue of ADVANT Beiten's International Briefing.

Since the July issue of International Briefing our European presence has expanded to a 15th location globally, in Genoa, Italy. ADVANT Nctm’s presence in Genoa will significantly strengthen the firm’s existing maritime practice, including shipping-related insurance and finance.

We are looking forward to working together with our new ADVANT Nctm's colleagues as successfully as in the recent cooperation for EBARA Pumps Europe S.p.A. (EPE) deal on the acquisition of the business division Spandau Pumpen of SKF Lubrication Systems Germany GmbH. The ADVANT Beiten team around the lead partners Markus Ley and Moritz Kopp has rendered advice on all issues under German law and ADVANT Nctm advised on antitrust issues.

The announcement of ADVANT’s Genoa presence comes less than two years after the launch of ADVANT alliance and coincides with the first anniversary of opening the Freiburg office of ADVANT Beiten when Barbara Mayer, Jan Barth and Gerhard Manz along with the team of 8 lawyers joined us to reinforce our Corporate and M&A practice. Since then, the team has grown to more than 50 heads and brains, including 17 qualified lawyers.

Also, further expanding our Corporate/M&A practice group, Roy Naor will be joining ADVANT Beiten's Frankfurt office as Salary Partner as of October this year.

In August we extended our membership of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany e.V. (AmCham Germany) to Patron and Executive Member in order to contribute to fostering transatlantic business. And within our US strategy in September ADVANT partners Hans-Josef Vogel (ADVANT Beiten), Jean-Nicolas Soret (ADVANT Altana), Guido Fauda and Michele Motta (ADVANT Nctm) took part in the Business Law Fall Meeting of the American Bar Association.

In this edition of our newsletter, we will highlight developments in the German legal landscape that might be of interest to you or your clients' business operations in Germany, such as:

• EU Data Act: we will talk about regulatory goals of the EU Data Act and its effects on data sharing, unfair contractual terms, data for public sector, regulating data processing services, especially cloud services, and international data transfer and interoperability.
• Data transfers from the EU to the US: we will review the long-awaited adequacy decision the European Commission for data transfers from the EU to the US and we will consider the question whether this will resolve the more than two years of uncertainty surrounding cooperation with U.S. companies.
• Cybersecurity: given the exponential increase in cyberattacks and the seriousness of their consequences we would like to share with you the ADVANT Cybersecurity in Europe / The 2023 Guide prepared in cooperation with our ADVANT colleagues from France and Italy.
• Product liability risks: we would like to build upon the article published in our July issue of the newsletter and give more insight on the product liability risks and the approaches to mitigate them within the framework of M&A transactions.
• The decision of the German Federal Government on establishment of commercial courts and English as language of the proceedings.
• Court practice on the applicability of the UN CISG on the arbitration agreement, dismissal of a supervisory board member for serious grounds related to conduct, liability of board members and managing directors for anti-trust infringements, and interim relief from an incorrect list of shareholders after a resolution.

You can find the newsletter here.

All the best,

Dr Barbara Mayer
Prof Dr Hans-Josef Vogel
Dr Christian von Wistinghausen
Moritz Kopp