Profile: Christian E Decher

Corporate Governance

Biography: Corporate Governance

Christian Decher has been a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer since 1994 and works in the Frankfurt office. As a member of the corporate practice group, his areas of practice include public M&A stock corporation law, transformation law, public takeover, private M&A and corporate litigation.

Christian has acted for major national and international listed companies, in particular in relation to national and cross-border mergers, conversions, enterprise agreements, squeeze-outs and the preparation and conducting of important general meetings. He has advised on a range of cross-border mergers (including those of Daimler/Chrysler, Mannesmann/Orange and Mannesmann/Vodafone). He also advised on mergers (such as the listed mortgage bank subsidiaries of Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank to form Eurohypo AG and mobilcom/freenet) and enterprise agreements, sometimes combined with squeeze-out proceedings (inter alia in the cases Edscha, Stinnes and debitel) or in pure squeeze-out proceedings (most recently Vattenfall and Kölnische Rück). In many of these transactions Christian has also been involved in the relevant general meetings, either in the back office or on the stage as an adviser to the chairperson of the meeting. In the aforementioned and numerous other transactions he also represented the clients in legal actions (including settlements).

Christian was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1958. He completed his legal education at the University of Cologne from where he earned the degree of Doctor of Laws (Dr iur). From 1985 to 1989 Christian was a research fellow at the Institute for Labour and Corporate Law at the University of Cologne. In 1992 and 1993 he worked as a foreign associate with the US law firm Sidley & Austin in New York and Chicago. Christian is the author of a treatise on interlocking directorates and the co-author of a commentary on the German Stock Corporation Act and a commentary on the German Transformation Act, as well as a treatise on the law of limited liability companies. He is a frequent lecturer at conferences on cross-border business combinations, corporate restructurings and other corporate law issues. Christian is a member of the commercial law committee of the Deutsche Anwaltsverein.

Christian joined the firm in 1989. He speaks German and English.