Three senior corporate partners quit Gide Loyrette Nouel to form a new M&A boutique with former Gide partner, Antoine Gosset-Grainville.
Antoine Bonnasse, Youssef Djehane and Jean-Emmanuel Skovron have left the Paris office of Gide Loyrette Nouel to form a new M&A boutique, BDGS Partners, with their former Gide colleague, Antoine Gosset-Grainville. Gosset-Grainville currently works for Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC), which is a state-run financial body, as deputy managing director.
The quartet are joined initially by two junior partners, Gide associate Max Baird-Smith, who is dual-qualified in England and France, and Mathilde Damon, who is currently head of legal for the Agence des Participations de l’Etat (the French Government Shareholding Agency).
BDGS will formally launch at the start of April, with Gosset-Grainville joining the firm in May.
The firm will focus on M&A, restructuring and strategic partnerships but will also advise on issues such as corporate governance, litigation, competition and regulatory law. The founding partners plan to increase BDGS to 10 partners over the next two years. A team of associates is also expected to join the boutique.
The founding partners have led a number of major deals, particularly for the French state. In 2005 Bonnasse and Skovron advised the government on the partial privatisation of Electricité de France (EdF). Skovron and Djehane were both involved on the merger between Gaz de France and Suez, first announced in 2006 before completing in 2008.
More recently, Skovron advised La Banque Postale on the establishment of a new bank for local authorities, the Société de Financement Local, which has been set up as part of the recapitalisation and restructuring of Franco-Belgian bank Dexia. At CDC, Gosset-Grainville was also involved in the Dexia restructuring.
The team’s clients also include IBM, Novartis, railway operator SNCF, Vivendi, and a number of significant financial institutions.
The news follows the recent departure of Gide corporate partners Serge Tatar and Renaud Rossa to boutique Lacourte Balas Raquin and that of property partner Erwan Le Douce-Bercot to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
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