What are the most significant cases, projects or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

We recently acquired a Swiss specialty real estate asset linked to our luxury business. As real estate transactions do not fall within the regular scope of our M&A activities, this was a particularly challenging but also very rewarding project, as I enjoyed gaining experience in a new field of business. This project was also a testament to our ability – as the Global Legal and Compliance team at Beiersdorf – to successfully co-operate across jurisdictions and areas of law to provide tailored support for our business functions.

Further to this specific project, over the last few years Beiersdorf has significantly intensified its corporate venturing activities. As corporate law lead counsel for our VC activities, I have been able to support on numerous venture capital investments in the life science space spanning across various jurisdictions around the world. Being involved in the dynamic international start up scene is a great experience, and I find it very inspiring to explore the differences and similarities in dealing with financing rounds and other venture capital topics across different eco-systems.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

A particularly rewarding experience during my time at Beiersdorf has been the support we were able to provide in relation to our investment in S-Biomedic, a Belgian skin-microbiome start up.

Back in 2018, I was lucky to be involved in our initial discussions with the company at a very early stage and it felt like a great success when we were able to execute our Series A investment later that year. Following this investment, our co-operation with S-Biomedic turned into such a success that our executive board decided to initiate discussions about a full takeover of the company in 2022. Building on the good relationship with the founders, I was again very closely involved in the negotiations, and we were finally able to agree on the full acquisition of the company at the end of the year. Overall, it was great to experience the full life cycle of a successful corporate venture capital investment, and I enjoyed the constructive and co-operative approach of all internal and external stakeholders over the many stages of the co-operation.

Another landmark experience was taking the internal co-lead in Beiersdorf’s largest acquisition to date (by deal volume) when we acquired the Chantecaille prestige skincare business at the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022. It was fascinating to work on this large international deal, and being involved in the final negotiations held in New York City shortly before Christmas 2021 remains one of the highlights of my professional life so far.