Practice 02

Private Capital & Direct Investments.

The law of those who have built their capital, and deploy it.

Overview

The firm advises founder-owners, operating shareholders and entrepreneurial families on their equity investments, acquisitions and the organisation of their holdings.

The first task is not to draft the documents. It is to tell the client what their matter truly is. A stake presented as a growth round is not always what it appears, and naming it correctly decides how it is protected.

Angle

Serving capital that has a face,
not capital that has a mandate.

The transactions conducted by the firm often engage a person, a family, an industrial trajectory. This nature of the clientele requires heightened discretion, a long-term reading of interests, and an economy of words that is learned.

Four client profiles.

01

The founder-owner

The person who built their group, who holds it as majority owner, and who remains its ultimate decision-maker. The firm supports them in transactions that engage their patrimony and the continuity of their business, from capital arbitrations to generational transmission.

02

The operating shareholder

An investor engaged in the conduct of one or more participations, a non-passive director. Counsel covers the articulation between shareholder role and operational function, governance balances, and protection against conflicts of interest.

03

The executive-investor

Senior executive investing alongside the syndicate, founder selling down part of their capital, corporate officer participating in long-term incentive mechanisms. The firm secures the entry conditions, the commitments and the exit conditions.

04

The entrepreneurial family

Several generations jointly holding one or more structuring assets. The firm leads family agreements, holding structures, arbitrations among members, intergenerational governance and long-term patrimonial protection.

Six moments in the life of capital.

Capital built outside Europe does not enter a French company the way capital born in Paris does. The constraints differ, the reflexes too, and certain errors surface too late.

Transaction 01

Rebuild the value before entering

Take a valuation apart piece by piece, separate the real asset from the promise not yet kept, condition the commitment on the delivery of what was announced. One pays for the real, not the promise.

Hold the calendar, target due diligence where the risk sits, negotiate the warranties and conditions, address sector risks before signing rather than after.

Transaction 02

Conduct the acquisition end to end

Transaction 03

Place each agreement where it holds

An investor preference may live in a class of shares or in a shareholders' agreement; the choice is not indifferent when a holding company under uniform law meets a French target. Placing each protection in the right instrument is what makes it enforceable on the day it counts.

Agreements, articles, supervisory bodies. Build balances that last between majority and minority, between branches of a family, between founders and investors, so that governance holds when interests diverge.

Transaction 04

Hold the balance between partners

Transaction 05

Prepare the exit as the entry was prepared

Partial or total disposal, transfer to an acquirer. The exit brings together the economic, the tax and the family in a single equation; one conducts it as a whole, not discovering it on the day.

Articulate French structures with those located in the countries of attachment, anticipate generational transitions, treat sensitive assets upstream.

Transaction 06

Organise the patrimony before it demands it

Commitment

Advise the person
before advising on the transaction.

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