Antitrust & Foreign Investment
The competition and antitrust team in Italy advises leading international and Italian corporates and financial institutions on the most complex and challenging antitrust matters and regularly defends clients before the Italian Competition Authority and the European Commission as well as Italian and European Courts. Our practice boasts extensive expertise in all aspects of EU and Italian antitrust law, with a particular focus on merger control, anticompetitive agreements and abuses of dominant position. The Italian team represents an integral part of our award-winning international competition and antitrust practice. We are able to efficiently co-ordinate multi-jurisdictional and global cases while maintaining an excellent understanding of and ability to implement local antitrust law.
Banking & Finance
A leading player in the Italian market, we provide financial institutions, companies and governments with a wide range of complex, highest quality legal advice on domestic and international finance transactions. Our extensive experience in acting for lenders as well as borrowers, in both industrial and financial sectors, proves our ability to satisfy the requirements of all parties to a transaction.
Capital markets
- Equity - An undisputed market leader, our equity capital markets team provides advice to Italian and other international issuers and lead managers in relation to domestic and cross-border equity and equity-linked investments (convertibles and exchangeables), including Regulation S, Rule 144A, and U.S. registered offerings.
- Debt - Recognised as one of the most sophisticated teams in the country, our debt capital markets team provides advice to major Italian and international investment banks and issuers in connection with MTN programmes, and high yield offerings, liability management transactions and on the capital markets aspects of complex restructuring transactions.
Corporate/M&A
Our Italian corporate/M&A team has acted for Italian and international leading financial institutions, private equity funds and the largest corporates providing advice on all aspects of corporate law involving both domestic and cross-border transactions, including M&A, joint ventures, corporate reorganisations and restructuring. Our clients rely on us for the integrated service that our corporate and finance practices can provide, allowing us to handle both aspects of their most complex or cross-border M&A transactions.
Employment
Our employment and incentives team advises international and Italian clients on all aspects of employment, pension and labour law, including contentious work. The team also works closely and in a highly integrated way with our corporate/M&A team, managing and planning all employment and incentives issues affecting M&A transactions.
Energy
Linklaters’ energy team in Italy comprises Italian and English law qualified lawyers, able to provide clients with the benefit of an in-depth knowledge of the Italian market as well as of international standards and cross-border issues. This market leading team has experience of advising on the most complex and high profile transactions. Our dedicated energy team, with its market-leading M&A and finance credentials has extensive experience of project development, acquisitions and project finance transactions, advising sponsors, lenders, contractors and public entities on major oil and gas, renewable energy and other power deals in Italy and around the world.
Litigation
Linklaters’ litigation and arbitration team in Milan, advises and represents clients in both cross-border and domestic matters, whether they are pre-contentious or the subject of a claim. The team regularly pleads before the Italian civil, commercial. We have acted on some of the highest profile litigation and arbitration proceedings in Italy for major corporations and financial institutions, both at a local, as well as at an international level.
Private Equity
With a unique breadth of experience in the private equity sector, spanning from corporate and M&A to banking and capital markets, our private equity team represents one of the best combined private equity offerings on the market, perfectly equipped to advise our clients on their most challenging and strategic mandates. With a client base representing the full credit spectrum, from banking institutions and private equity funds to blue-chip corporations, we have developed an outstanding track record acting on some of the leading deals in the market
Projects and Infrastructure
Linklaters’ projects and infrastructure team is at the forefront of the market advising on complex, large scale project developments and financings, highly structured transactions and merger and acquisitions in the energy and infrastructure sector across the globe. In Italy, our projects and infrastructure team consists of Italian and English law qualified lawyers, able to provide clients with the benefit of an in-depth knowledge of the Italian market as well as of international standards and cross-border issues. This market leading team has experience of advising on the most complex and high profile transactions.
Public law
Linklaters’ projects and infrastructure team is at the forefront of the market advising on complex, large scale project developments and financings, highly structured transactions and merger and acquisitions in the energy and infrastructure sector across the globe. In Italy, our projects and infrastructure team consists of Italian and English law qualified lawyers, able to provide clients with the benefit of an in-depth knowledge of the Italian market as well as of international standards and cross-border issues. This market leading team has experience of advising on the most complex and high profile transactions.
Real Estate
Our experienced real estate sector team in Italy comprises specialists in banking, mergers and acquisitions, real estate corporate finance, tax, funds, securitisation, derivatives, litigation and asset finance. All are market leaders in their own areas. Our team also includes administrative law specialists, who have extensive experience of town planning and zoning regulation and construction law and who are able to provide clients with the benefit of an in-depth knowledge of the most technical aspects of the sector. This ability to assemble top-quality resources across diverse practices is a key point of differentiation as transactions demand increasingly complex and innovative solutions.
Regulatory
Our Regulatory/Financial Markets Group in Italy is dedicated to providing legal and regulatory advice to the leading players in the financial markets. We provide a comprehensive range of legal services on all aspects of financial markets and financial regulation, including insurance regulation.
Structured finance
Our structured finance/securitisation team provides advice to arrangers, originators, credit enhancement providers, swap counterparties and rating agencies on extremely diverse securitisation transactions, including, RMBS, CMBS, CBOs (both cash-funded and partially synthetic), consumer loans securitisations and leasing receivables securitisations. Our structured finance group also assists borrowers and lenders in complex factoring transactions.
Tax
Our tax practice regularly advises financial institutions, private equity firms, credit funds and multi-nationals on a wide range of domestic and international tax matters. Our Italian practice focuses on tax law connected to M&A transactions, corporate reorganisations, equity and debt capital markets, syndicated loans, acquisition finance, real estate transactions, securitisations and structured finance. It is also experienced in assisting clients in connection with tax ruling requests, tax refund claims, tax audits, tax assessments, tax settlements and tax litigations.
Alternative resourcing: our team in Lecce
Linklaters Italy has a specialist team in Lecce to optimise and streamline resource intensive parts of the transaction value chain such as due diligence and high volume document preparation. Today the Lecce team brings together 15 lawyers who work as part of an integrated team with their colleagues in Milan and the Linklaters global network. They are able to bring to bear their knowledge of the Italian market alongside the latest approaches developed by our global teams.
Innovation
We put innovation at the heart of our client delivery. The Italian innovation team is one of the most sophisticated in Linklaters, leading globally on a range of technologies and on innovation within client legal departments.
Our approach is anchored in value. Every new approach introduced has to impact the bottom line for clients, generating more revenue or increase the quality of legal products.
Our banking finance transactions are coordinated using digital platforms.
We have taught AI to understand Italian law and Italian language so that distressed finance packages are analysed at speed. We helped numerous clients, like the World Economic Forum, plan their legal operations to apply technology and talent plan.
We have a dedicated financial analyst to optimise banking transactions, we’re empowering our team in Lecce of 12 cross-speciality lawyers to deliver large-scale matters better and we are our new office in Milan will move our lawyers towards collaborative and digitally enabled delivery.
