Counsel for the bold,
rooted in Hainaut since 1962.
A Brussels-rooted corporate firm advising European mid-market leaders on the transactions, restructurings and regulatory decisions that define their next decade — written, set and published from our offices in Brussels, Antwerp, Luxembourg and Frankfurt.
Six decades of decisions, not a list of marketing claims.
What follows is the firm's working chronology, set as five chapters. Each is dated, each is verifiable, and each corresponds to a moment when the firm chose what kind of counsel it would be.
-
1962
A practice is opened in Hainaut.
Maître Henri Ghissignies establishes the original practice in the village of Ghissignies, Hainaut. The first client matters concern Belgian manufacturing families in transition between founder and second generation. The firm remains under the family name; no partner team has ever been merged away.
-
1989
Continental expansion opens.
A second office opens in Antwerp to advise Benelux industrial groups; a Luxembourg presence is added in 1996 to serve the cross-border holding structures that will define the next decade. The firm commits, on paper, to mid-market work — a deliberate refusal to pursue scale for its own sake.
-
2007
The European Mid-Market Counsel Alliance is formed.
Ghissignies & Partners convenes the founding members of what becomes the EMCA — a vetted network of 41 partner firms across 18 jurisdictions, all bound by a shared quality protocol written by the firm's senior partners. One engagement in Brussels now opens a coordinated continental strategy, not a patchwork of unfamiliar counsel.
-
2018 — present
Seven consecutive years at Tier 1.
Ranked Tier 1 for Corporate/M&A in Belgium by Chambers Europe every year from 2018 through 2024. Named Belgian Mid-Market Law Firm of the Year at the European Legal Awards in 2021, 2023 and 2024. The firm closes 89% of mandates inside the originally agreed timeline — against an estimated 61% for Big Four advisory firms.
Maître Henri Ghissignies.
The firm takes its name from a man and a place rather than a marketing line. Henri Ghissignies read law at Louvain, returned to the village his family had farmed for four generations, and opened his practice above a pharmacy on the Place Communale. His first ledger, kept in copperplate, is still held in the Brussels archive. He believed that mid-market companies — too large for a village solicitor, too small for the international firms then arriving in Brussels — deserved the same quality of counsel as either. Sixty-two years on, that conviction remains the firm's only operating principle.
H. Ghissignies — Place Communale, 1962
The firm's working scale, set in typeset figures.
Cumulative transaction value since 2010: €14.3 billion. Cross-border M&A mandates (2018–2024) at the €20M–€850M tier: 137. Mandates closed within the originally agreed timeline: 89%.
One engagement in Brussels. A coordinated legal strategy across eighteen jurisdictions.
When a mid-market client's matter crosses a border, the conventional answer is a referral — and the conventional cost is a loss of coherence. The EMCA is the firm's answer to that problem.
The alliance is a vetted network of 41 independent firms — sole Belgian member: Ghissignies & Partners — bound by a single quality protocol drafted by the firm's senior partners and audited annually. Every member firm accepts the same engagement standards, the same conflict-of-interest discipline, the same bilingual working practice. Every member is selected by reference casework, not geography.
The result, for the client, is straightforward. A Belgian holding's acquisition of a French manufacturing subsidiary, or a German family office's restructuring through Luxembourg and the Netherlands, is run from a single file, on a single timeline, in two languages. The client meets one lead partner in Brussels; behind that partner is a coordinated bench of 41 firms who already know the matter, the protocol and each other.
This is why mid-market leaders choose a Brussels-rooted firm with an alliance — rather than a Belgian-only practice — when the deal crosses borders.
A practice is also the work it chooses to do without charge.
Eighty hours, per partner, per year.
Every partner of Ghissignies & Partners commits, in writing, to a minimum of eighty hours of pro bono work each calendar year. The commitment is recorded, audited, and disclosed in the firm's annual report. It is not a marketing line; it is a covenant that the firm has held since the practice opened above the pharmacy in 1962.
The work is concentrated in two fields. The first is arts patronage in Hainaut — legal counsel to galleries, museums and ensembles whose scale is too small for the Brussels firms and too institutional for the village solicitors. The second is refugee legal aid, run in conjunction with the Hainaut Bar and a small number of long-standing partner charities.
A French- and English-speaking partner pair, on every matter.
Cross-border work fails when the working language fails. The firm staffs every engagement — domestic or international — with two partners: one working in French, one working in English. Both are responsible for the matter end to end. Neither is rotated off without the client's written consent.
This is the operational discipline behind the alliance: the client does not negotiate the language friction that derails most cross-border deals. The firm absorbs it. A Belgian holding's French-speaking counsel and its English-speaking general counsel speak to the same two people, on the same file, in two languages, every week.
A 30-minute introduction with a senior partner. Discreet, bilingual, and without obligation.