Rikke Vestergaard

Attorney, Corporate/M&A

As an attorney in our Corporate/M&A practice group, the day-to-day work involves a wide variety of tasks. It is a very broad practice group with specialists in everything from commercial contracts, compliance aspects to corporate reorganisations. Personally, I work mainly on Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), which also represents a large part of the work in our practice group.

The transactions cover a wide range of undertakings, from small start-ups to large and well-known companies. Often the transactions have an international aspect, either because the buyer or seller is foreign or because the target company has activities or subsidiaries in several jurisdictions.

A large part of my work on an M&A transaction involves process management and coordination, both externally with the client’s other advisors but also internally with our other practice groups, which often have to provide input to different parts of the process. This requires a broad knowledge and insight into the work of our other practice groups.

In addition, there is often a lot of work involved in drafting and negotiating the transaction documents. This part of the work involves an exciting interplay between the law and the commercial desires and realities of the client. It requires a lot of client contact, and throughout the process you get close to our clients and their business – it gives the work an extra dimension and is one of the things I value most in my work on an M&A transaction.

Another element that you really benefit from when working on M&A transactions is the great team spirit that exists in Gorrissen Federspiel. In our group, we typically work in teams that – depending on the size of the transaction – typically consist of a partner, an attorney and an assistant attorney. There are, of course, some tasks that are generally performed by the assistant attorney, while other tasks are generally the responsibility of the partner or the attorney. However, it is always a team effort to complete a transaction, and if necessary, everyone helps where they can.

I started at Gorrissen Federspiel when I was a student and have also spent my entire time as an assistant attorney at the firm. Most of my time as an assistant attorney was focused on M&A, but I also spent a year in our EU & Competition practice group, where the focus was on learning more about the parts of competition law that interact with M&A. Of course, this does not mean that I am now in charge of drafting the merger notification for a transaction – I leave that to our skilled lawyers in the EU & Competition practice group – but it gives me a better insight into what elements are important in their work and how it may affect the transaction process, so that we can incorporate it into the process from the very beginning.