Since its inception in 2000, Gatienne Brault & Associés has advised acquirers, sellers and managers in over a hundred small and mid-cap transactions.

Client type: a team led by the founder of a healthcare group under LBO.
We have been advising this company for almost 20 years on all aspects of their contractual and equity holding relationships with their financial and corporate partners. We assisted them in their acquisitions and successive buy-outs which enabled the management team to increase its interest into a majority shareholding.

Client type: mass market retailer
We have been active in establishing joint ventures between one of our oldest clients and its main franchisees, enabling the latter to create and develop groups that run franchise outlets, and eventually, obtain liquidity on their investment. Our client thus retained control of its distribution network while benefiting from the entrepreneurialism of its franchisees. 

Client type: private equity asset manager
We assisted our client in designing, structuring and creating a private equity fund in the form of a corporate limited partnership listed on NYSE EURONEXT PARIS to invest in buyouts through FCPRs (French regulated mutual funds dedicated to private equity transactions). This legal structure enabled our client to comply with public market corporate governance best practice while establishing the investment team’s carried interest under secured terms and conditions, both from a tax and legal standpoint.

Client type: B to B services company
We advised our client, whose company was created in the early 2000s and who has since opened subsidiaries in more than twenty countries worldwide, in organizing nearly annual fundraisings while establishing appropriate incentive compensation plans for all its executives (about a hundred)to be able to participate and become or increase their shareholdings.

In the context of a staggered acquisition, at prices that were based on a complex financial formula, we represented the acquirer before a national arbitration panel regarding the implementation of the financial formula. We worked in close collaboration with a leading audit and accounting firm, as the core of the matter was the interpretation and implementation of complex consolidation accounting principles.

We prepared the defense of an international information technology company which was sued before the commercial court for breach of his obligations to invest in a new venture set up by a team of consultants. We obtained the dismissal of all the claimants’ demands based in particular on willful misconduct by demonstrating that there was no causal link between the damage suffered and the bankruptcy proceedings on the one hand, and the lack of investment from our client on the other hand. Our client’s position was justified by the other parties’ own default under the investment agreement.