Arne Grimme

Arne Grimme is head of De Brauw’s Corporate M&A practice. He advises on public and private transactions, leveraged buy-outs and complex cross-border transactions and corporate restructurings.

Arne has been repeatedly recognised as a leader in his field, having been nominated for the Best M&A Lawyer Award since 2007. He won the award “Best M&A Lawyer” in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Legal 500 EMEA has also consistently named him a leading individual from 2009. Moreover, IFLR 1000 has recognised Arne as one of the leading practitioners in mergers and acquisitions every year since 2006. Arne was named “Lawyer of the Year” in the Best Lawyers 2014-2015 edition (Netherlands community) in Corporate Law, Mergers and Acquisitions Law and Private Equity Law.

In 2018 he was also inducted into the Legal 500 Hall of Fame. Furthermore, his many accolades include being ranked first tier in M&A and private equity by Chambers.

Arne is a trusted advisor to many of his clients, and counts among his diverse client base Philips, AkzoNobel, NXP, Rabobank, BAM, Corbion, Arcadis, Bain Capital, Gilde, CVC Capital, and Schiphol Airport.

Notable transactions include representing:

• AkzoNobel on the unsuccessful hostile public offer by PPG Industries and advised in its dealings with activist shareholder Elliott Advisors, and successfully defended AkzoNobel in court cases initiated by Elliott Advisors
• Philips on numerous M&A transactions including the EUR 862 million IPO of Philips Lighting; and the sale of Philips’ 80.1% interest in Lumileds to Apollo
• NXP on numerous strategic transactions including the USD 40 billion merger with Freescale, the EUR 2.75 billion sale by NXP of its Standard Products division to JAC Capital and on the USD 47 billion public offer by Qualcomm

Furthermore, he also advised; Bpost on the unsuccessful public offer on PostNL, Shareholders of Q-Park on their EUR 2.95 billion divestment of shares to KKR Infrastructure; and Bain Capital Private Equity on the acquisition of Bugaboo.