Dealmakers Dialogues Brussels: Benelux M&A Challenges and Opportunities in 2023

Dominique is an experienced cross-border transactional lawyer, he advises clients on Private Equity, Mergers & Acquisitions, Complex Reorganizations and Corporate Compliance & Governance. His practice focuses on buy-outs, private equity transactions, M&A transactions, corporate restructurings and general corporate issues.

Dominique co-heads the Corporate Practice of Baker McKenzie for the larger part of the EMEA Region and is a member of the Steering Committee of the EMEA M&A Practice Group. Dominique is mentioned consistently since many years as a leading corporate lawyer in Chambers Global, Chambers Europe, Legal 500 and IFLR (International Financial Law review). He has been nominated Acritas Star Lawyer and is one of the Belgian winners of the Client Choice Awards. More recently Dominique has also been nominated ‘Thomson Reuters Stand-out Lawyer – independently rated lawyers’ 2023.

Marc Staal is partner at Squarefield, the leading independent Corporate Finance firm entirely focused on clients in the International Food & Agri markets. Before Squarefield, Marc worked for 24 years in various Investment & Corporate Banking roles at VDBG, NIBC and Rabobank, where he was mainly active in the origination and execution of global Food, Agricultural and Commodity related M&A transactions. Marc holds a MSc in Business Administration from the University of Groningen, NL.

Tom Swinnen specialises in corporate and M&A (incl. venture capital and private equity).

Tom advises both international and national (incl. family-owned) clients on corporate and M&A matters. He and his team regularly act as lead legal counsel in complex inbound or outbound cross-border deals and reorganisations. Tom also acts as a ‘trusted advisor’ for a number of key Belgian clients and families, and is highly regarded for his service-minded and client-oriented style.

He regularly speaks at conferences on matters of corporate law and M&A, and is a teaching assistant at the Ghent University in company law.

Tom Swinnen is recommended for Corporate and M&A by Legal 500: he is appreciated by clients for the added value he brings to the negotiation table « due to his competence and emphatic behaviour » and is praised as a « pro-active and good listening partner for international M&A deals ». He is rated as “Highly regarded” by IFLR1000 for M&A in Belgium.

Tom is a member of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) chairing the Legal Subcommittee, and is a steering member of the Belgian Equestrian Quality (BEQ) cluster powered by Agoria.

In addition to his practice as Corporate M&A lawyer, Tom has developed a niche practice focusing on equine law, representing the world’s leading equestrians and equine entrepreneurs established in Belgium.

Prior to joining Simont Braun, Tom Swinnen worked with another leading independent Belgian law firm and headed the M&A/Transaction Law department of the legal arm of a Big4.

Dominique started his career as environmental consultant and further specialized in enterprise risk management, in particular with respect to EHS and later ESG issues. He was involved in risk engineering and became later underwriter environmental impairment liability. Since he started with ERM, in 2003, he was involved in due diligence both sell side and buy side, intensively working with clients identifying ESG risks and opportunities from an enterprise risk management perspective both pre-acquisition and post deal. He is managing multi-national multi-site due diligence projects in various industrial sectors, both for trade and financial buyers.

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