Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

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Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

logo
legal form LLP
founding 2000
Seat London, UKUnited KingdomUnited Kingdom 
Number of employees approx. 4,700 (worldwide)
sales 1.64 billion euros (worldwide), Germany: 441.8 million euros (2018)
Branch Legal advice
Website www.freshfields.de
Status: 2019

Park Tower , seat of the law firm in Frankfurt am Main

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP ( Freshfields for short ) is an international law firm based in London . The law firm advises and represents national and international companies, financial institutions and governments.

Size and distribution

The law firm has over 2500 lawyers at 26 locations in 17 countries in Europe , Asia , North America and the Middle East and is one of the Magic Circle law firms at the company's headquarters.

In Germany there are five offices in Berlin , Düsseldorf , Frankfurt am Main , Hamburg and Munich , which generated sales of 441.8 million euros in the 2018/2019 financial year. This makes Freshfields the largest law firm in Germany in terms of turnover. The former Cologne office was merged with the Düsseldorf office in 2016. The resulting "Rhineland office" is located in Düsseldorf.

In Austria, there is an office in Vienna , which generated sales of 53.8 million euros in the 2018/2019 financial year.

Work areas

The company covers the usual areas of law of a commercial law firm. In addition, the law firm forms sector or branch-related teams for automotive engineering, healthcare and large capital investors.

history

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has existed in its current form as a major international law firm since 2000, when the London law firm Freshfields initially merged with the German law firm Deringer Tessin Herrmann & Sedemund and a few months later with the German-Austrian law firm Bruckhaus Westrick Heller Löber - in 1998 as first cross-border merger of a German law firm emerged - united. The merger was announced in mid-2000 and is considered by industry circles to be the only real success among the many large international law firms that were newly established in Germany at that time.

Freshfields' history dates back to 1743 when the firm was founded in London and Samuel Dodd was appointed as an attorney for the Bank of England , which remains a client of the firm to this day. The law firm Bruckhaus Westrick Heller Löber has its earliest origins in Hamburg (office since 1840), Düsseldorf (since 1919) and Berlin / Frankfurt (since 1936/48). Deringer Tessin Herrmann & Sedemund was founded in 1962 by the antitrust lawyer and CDU European politician Arved Deringer (1913–2011) in Bonn. Other namesake were the lawyers Claus Tessin, Hansjürgen Herrmann and Jochim Sedemund.

Freshfields has more than 500 lawyers in Germany and the number of employees worldwide is 4700. In Germany, Freshfields made a turnover of around 370 million euros in 2016.

The office has a name in the form of a word and image mark , consisting of the company name and a stylized angel in a circle to the left. The depicted Archangel Michael has graced the coat of arms of the Freshfield family since the middle of the 18th century and became the company logo after James William Freshfield (1775–1864) was the first of the family to become a partner in the firm, which was founded in 1743.

Mandates

Federal government

The law firm has advised the German federal government and federal ministries several times in the past on ordinances and legislative proposals. Matters in which the law firm was active include the draft of the Financial Market Stabilization Act , the formulation of the conditions for the Greek haircut , the Special Fund Financial Market Stabilization (SoFFin), the Reconstruction Loan Corporation , which is subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, is assisting Greece Legally represented by Freshfields.

After it was already known that the law firm had received a consulting fee of 1.8 million euros from the then finance minister Peer Steinbrück , the Bild newspaper reported on February 22, 2013 that the amount paid was much higher. Between October 2008 and October 2009, the law firm received around 5.5 million euros for consulting services from the Federal Agency for Financial Market Stabilization (FMSA), which is part of the ministry's division. According to the FSMA, this sum had to be borne directly or indirectly by the recipients of the SoFFin measures. The fact that Steinbrück received a fee of EUR 15,000 for a lecture at the law firm in September 2011 caused controversy. He claimed not to have been involved in the consulting fees.

German Football Association

In the course of the irregularities in the allocation of the 2006 soccer World Cup , the law firm was commissioned by the German Football Association in October 2015 to investigate and legally review the facts and the payment flows. The investigation was led by Christian Duve. In his presentation of the results, Duve said that no evidence of tampering had been found, but that it could not be ruled out either.

Cum-ex scandal

According to a report by Spiegel from November 2016, Freshfields advised Macquarie , Fortis , Barclays and Maple Bank (the latter now insolvent) on controversial dividend deals (so-called cum-ex deals ) on the basis of reports from partner Ulf Johannemann, then tax Head of the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Frankfurt. Complicated share transactions around the dividend cut-off date are said to have induced the German tax authorities to reimburse capital gains tax once paid on dividends several times over. This resulted in tax losses in the tens of billions. For this purpose, an investigation committee of the Bundestag was set up, which also examines the role of Freshfields in cum-ex deals. In November 2016, the committee requested the investigating judge of the Federal Supreme Court to search Freshfields' premises and to confiscate evidence. This application was initially rejected: the applicants had not sufficiently demonstrated that the evidence could be relevant to the investigation. The offices of the law firm were later searched a total of three times at the instigation of the public prosecutor, the last time on June 13, 2019.

In August 2019, Freshfields reached an agreement with the insolvency administrator of Maple Bank on damages of 50 million euros.

On November 22, 2019, the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main applied for an arrest warrant for the former tax chief of the Frankfurt Freshfields branch for aiding and abetting tax evasion . On the same day officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office arrested Johannemann and brought him before a judge who ordered pre- trial detention . In December 2019, Wolfgang Schuck, the former Germany boss of Maple Bank, and another German top manager of the bank were arrested. Shortly before Christmas 2019, the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office brought charges against Ulf Johannemann, who is considered a key figure in what is possibly the largest tax scandal in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was released from custody at the same time.

Observers and investigators assume that Freshfields has supported German and foreign banks and investment firms “like no other law firm” in “exempting the state”.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Law firm brochure 2017 ( Memento from April 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Sales 2018: Freshfields curve points further upwards on juve.de from July 5, 2019, accessed on November 8, 2019.
  3. ↑ Law firm records 2017/18 on juve.de, accessed on March 14, 2019.
  4. ↑ Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer - large law firm gives up its Cologne office on handelsblatt.de on December 17, 2015, accessed on April 20, 2017.
  5. ↑ Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer - large law firm gives up its Cologne office on handelsblatt.de on December 17, 2015, accessed on April 20, 2017.
  6. ↑ Law firm records 2018/19 Austria on juve.de, accessed on November 8, 2019.
  7. ↑ Tailored to the cornerstones of successful corporate management on freshfields.com, accessed on March 8, 2016.
  8. ↑ Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, lobbyradar.de ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 9, 2015.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lobbyradar.de
  9. ↑ Handelsblatt dated June 21, 2000, 16 and commentary by Mävers, ibid, 63
  10. ↑ Handelsblatt of August 12, 2002, 14
  11. ↑ Pöllath, Reinhard / Saenger, Ingo (ed.) (2009): 200 years of business lawyers in Germany, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 71
  12. ↑ sueddeutsche.de October 23, 2017: Freshfields and probably the largest German tax fraud
  13. ↑ Slinn, Judy (1984): A History of Freshfields, London
  14. ↑ Servant of two masters: How large law firms advise the federal government in the euro crisis ( Memento of July 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on abhabenwatch.de of July 25, 2012, accessed on March 8, 2016.
  15. ↑ Report by Zs. Focus, Feb. 22, 2013
  16. ↑ DFB affair: Freshfields partner Christian Duve steers external education on juve.de from October 21, 2015, accessed on March 8, 2016.
  17. ↑ Freshfields report available from the DFB
  18. ↑ Freshfields: No clear evidence of purchased WM 2006 - DFB disguised million payments on zeit.de from March 4, 2016, accessed on March 8, 2016.
  19. ↑ Martin Hesse, Anne Seith: Freshfields law firm deeply involved in tax scandal. In: Der Spiegel. November 18, 2016, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  20. ↑ a b c Tim Bartz, Simon Hage, Martin Hesse, Thomas Schulz, Jörg Schmitt : The Freshfields files. In: Spiegel Online . January 17, 2020, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  21. ↑ Anja Hall: Freshfields is to be searched. In: Legal Tribune Online . November 25, 2016, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  22. ↑ BGH prevents office searches. In: Legal Tribune Online. February 9, 2017, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  23. ↑ The Maple system is considered particularly perfidious. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . February 19, 2019, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  24. ↑ Cum Ex: Investigators search law firm Freshfields for the second time. In: The time. November 23, 2018, accessed February 20, 2019 .
  25. ↑ Freshfields searched again. In: Legal Tribune Online. June 17, 2019, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  26. ↑ Cum-ex scandal - Almost two billion euros will go to the creditors of Maple Bank. In: Handelsblatt , August 29, 2019, accessed on December 8, 2019.
  27. ↑ Cum-Ex scandal - first accused in custody. In: tagesschau.de , November 27, 2019, accessed December 8, 2019.
  28. ↑ Marcus Jung : Former head of Maple Bank arrested. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 13, 2019, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  29. ↑ Marcus Jung: Freshfields threatens a fine of up to 15.3 million euros. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. January 17, 2020, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  30. ↑ René Bender, Sönke Iwersen, Volker Votsmeier: Ex-tax chief of Freshfields is released from custody. In: Handelsblatt. December 18, 2019, accessed January 17, 2020 .
  31. ↑ Jan Willmroth: The time for excuses is over. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 23, 2019, p. 23.

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 50.8 "  N , 0 ° 6 ′ 27.7"  W.