Which practice area handles cross-border M&A transactions between €20M and €850M?

The firm's M&A practice leads these mandates, supported by the European Mid-Market Counsel Alliance for coordinated local counsel in 18 jurisdictions.

Does Ghissignies & Partners advise on EU competition and regulatory matters?

Yes — EU Competition & Regulatory is one of the six listed practices, covering antitrust, state aid, foreign investment screening and sector-specific regulation.

How are matters staffed across the six practices?

Each matter is led by a bilingual partner pair — one French-speaking, one English-speaking — drawn from the relevant practice and supported by the firm's 18.4-year average partner tenure.

Can the firm coordinate counsel in jurisdictions outside its four offices?

Yes — through the European Mid-Market Counsel Alliance, the firm coordinates vetted partner firms across 18 jurisdictions under a shared quality protocol.

Volume IV · Chapter Index Established 1962 · Brussels

Practices

The complete catalogue of advisory work carried out of Ghissignies & Partners — six practices, staffed as bilingual senior pairs, operating inside a vetted continental network of forty-one firms. What follows is not a service menu. It is a register of the matters on which the firm accepts instruction.

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§ 01 · Orientation

Six desks, one coordinated advisory model.

Each of the firm's six practices is staffed as a bilingual partner pair — one French-speaking, one English-speaking counsel of seniority — so that a single engagement is governed from the first call by two named partners rather than by a rotating cast of associates. The pair operates inside a shared continental network, the European Mid-Market Counsel Alliance, in which forty-one firms across eighteen jurisdictions are bound by a single quality protocol. The result, for the client, is a coordinated legal strategy that travels across borders without the usual discontinuity between advisors.

§ 02 · The Catalogue

Index of Practices

i. Mergers & Acquisitions Lead counsel on cross-border transactions between €20M and €850M across the Benelux, France, Germany and the wider EU.
ii. Corporate Restructuring Domestic and cross-border reorganisations, refinancings and liability management for mid-market groups under pressure or in transition.
iii. EU Competition & Regulatory Merger control, State aid, FDI screening and sector-specific EU regulation before the Commission and national authorities.
iv. Private Wealth Succession, holding structures and intergenerational transfer for entrepreneurial families and family offices across Belgium, Luxembourg and France.
v. Disputes & Investigations Commercial disputes, internal investigations and regulatory defence, led from Brussels and coordinated across the Alliance.
vi. Employment Law Executive contracts, restructurings of workforce, works-council proceedings and senior departures across multiple jurisdictions.

§ 03 · Featured Practice

Cross-border M&A, conducted as a single engagement.

The Mergers & Acquisitions practice is the firm's anchor. Between 2018 and 2024 the firm acted as lead counsel on one hundred and thirty-seven cross-border M&A transactions valued between €20 million and €850 million — most of them involving a Belgian, Dutch, French or German counterparty, and many of them stretching across two, three or four jurisdictions in a single timetable.

A typical matter is opened by two named partners — one French-speaking, one English-speaking — and carried through diligence, structuring, negotiation and signing by a bilingual senior team. The firm's alliance relationship is invoked only where local law must be applied by counsel admitted in the relevant jurisdiction; the strategic direction of the file does not leave the building.

The practice's principal clients include Belgian manufacturing groups, Benelux private-equity funds, family-owned European industrials and a small number of North-American acquirers entering the EU through the Benelux. The firm has advised on a cumulative €14.3 billion in transaction value since 2010.

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§ 04 · Evidence

A quiet register of figures.

96% Client-retention rate Across the trailing eleven fiscal years, verified by independent audit, 2024.

89% Mandates closed on time Closed within the originally agreed timeline over the past five years, against a Big Four benchmark of 61%.

18 Jurisdictions, one protocol The European Mid-Market Counsel Alliance, of which the firm is sole Belgian member, covering eighteen jurisdictions.

18.4yrs Average partner tenure The deepest bench of senior, non-rotating counsel in the Benelux mid-market segment.

Tier 1 · Corporate / M&A · Chambers Europe · 2018–2024 · Belgian Mid-Market Law Firm of the Year · 2021 · 2023 · 2024

§ 05 · The Partner Pair

Two named partners on every matter. One speaks French. One speaks English.

Cross-border mandates are derailed more often by language friction than by law. A letter drafted in one tongue, reviewed in a second and executed in a third loses a clause at each crossing. The firm has answered that risk with a structural rule rather than a procedural one: every matter is staffed by a French- and English-speaking partner pair, both of senior rank, both of whom attend the principal meetings. The instruction is governed by counsel who can read the counterparty's draft in its original language without translation.

The pair is not a courtesy arrangement. The two partners share strategic direction of the file and sign the principal advice jointly. Their average tenure at the firm is 18.4 years, against an industry norm measured in single digits. The result, for the client, is a senior counterparty who will be on the call next quarter, and the quarter after, without rotation.

Seniority before headcount

Forty-seven partners, one hundred and twenty-eight qualified lawyers, and a deliberately flat ratio of senior to junior counsel. Files are not run by associates; partners run them.

ii.

Continuity over cycles

No merged-away partner team in sixty-two years. The firm has not absorbed a practice by acquisition and has not lost a partnership group by departure.

iii.

Two languages, one file

A French-speaking partner and an English-speaking partner are appointed at instruction. Bilingual staffing is structural, not optional, and is recorded in the engagement letter.

iv.

A protocol, not a referral list

Where local law requires locally-admitted counsel, the matter is passed into the European Mid-Market Counsel Alliance under a shared quality protocol — not handed across to an unknown firm.

The partner pair is appointed at the first consultation. There is no intermediate intake.

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