Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised UBS AG on the combination of most of its European wealth management business into UBS Europe SE, a European company headquartered in Frankfurt am Main. UBS Europe SE was established through the cross-border merger of its Italian, Spanish, Luxembourg, Dutch, and German wealth management activities. With the merger taking effect on December 1, 2016, UBS Deutschland AG as the absorbing entity was converted into an SE.
UBS Europe SE will be subject to the supervision of the Bundesanstalt fur Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht ("BaFin"). Going forward, the operating business of the merged companies, which include the foreign branches of UBS (Luxembourg) S.A. in Denmark, Austria, and Sweden, will be continued through branches of UBS Europe SE.
The multi-jurisdictional Freshfields team was led by Corporate Partners Thomas Bucker and Gunnar Schuster and included Vienna-based Corporate Partner Farid Sigari-Majd and Vienna-based Finance Partner Florian Klimscha, as well as Employment, Pensions and Benefits Partners Thomas Muller-Bonanni and Raquel Florez, Tax Partner Jan Brinkmann, and Corporate Partners Dirk-Jan Smit, David Franco, Javier Monzon, Nicola Asti, and Raffaele Lener.
Lead in-house advisers at UBS in Zurich were Saumya Bhavsar and Antonio La Verghetta. In-house advisers at UBS Deutschland AG in Frankfurt included Michael Fischer, Uwe Trafkowski, and Holger Hirschberg.
