People

Benjamin Cichostepski-Lesage Partner

Parigi; Paris Tech Studio

Ben is the founding partner of Orrick's French Tech Companies Group. For more than 15 years, he has been advising high-potential innovative companies as well as venture and tech growth investors on all their corporate private equity and M&A transactions in France and globally.

As such, he is involved in every stage of their development, from incubation and fundraising to external growth and industrial exits as well as public offerings (IPO, secondary).

Ben has significant experience advising French companies expanding into the United States, and assists them over the full lifecycle of their overseas growth. He also counts a number of American investors and buyers among his clients.

From his first venture deal in 2006, where he represented Lightspeed Venture Partners in Wikio’s Series A, which became Teads, a company he then accompanied for 11 years until its sale to Altice, Ben has led more than 330 corporate tech transactions. He has been involved in the main exit transactions in recent years, particularly those with a franco-american element such as Neolane/Adobe, La Fourchette/TripAdvisor, Stupeflix/GoPro, eNovance/Red Hat, Regaind/Apple, Zenly/Snap, Teads/Altice, Getaround/Drivy, Glose/Medium, Sqreen/Datadog, Lalilo/Renaissance Learning, Tempow/Google, Context/Integral Ad Science, Monk/ACV Auctions, Cajoo/Flink, Shipfix/Veson Nautical, Bereal/Voodoo.

Ben's leadership has contributed to placing Orrick as the #1 Venture Capital and Tech Growth practice in France (ranked #1 by Pitchbook in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 - CF News in 2024, 2023, 2022). 

Recognized as a key lawyer in the market in venture capital and tech growth, Ben was ranked No. 1 in the "Top 10 Influential French Venture Capital Lawyers in Private Equity 2023" by Business Today. He was named "Lawyer of the Year" in the 2023 edition of Best Lawyers France in the Venture Capital category. He is also ranked as a Leading Individual by The Legal 500 EMEA in Private Equity - Venture Capital/Growth Capital since 2020 and was voted as the most active tech lawyer in France in 2019 by transaction volume in CF News’ ranking.

Ben is the founder of Orrick Paris Tech Studio, a one of a kind office and working space created in June 2022 and located in the heart of the Paris Tech scene, which is the headquarters of Orrick's French Tech practice.

Patrick Hubert Partner

Parigi

This breadth of experience has allowed him to become a leading authority in the field of antitrust, but his background helps him borrow ideas from anywhere – finding imaginative solutions for the legal and business challenges his clients face.

Patrick has long been a trailblazer in his field. For example, years before private compliance programs became commonplace, Patrick persuaded his clients to dedicate resources to compliance policies, thus being one of the first to encourage proactive rather than strictly reactive actions. In France, he was one of the first to launch antitrust recovery claims and to work on a private standalone claim, without any precedent from the regulator. Acting on the plaintiff side, he obtained what was at that time the highest fine ever imposed on a dominant company (350 M€).

He is currently handling private claims totaling more than 5 billion euro, advising global tech companies and other multinationals in French and EU competition matters, including merger control filings, cartel and abuse of dominance investigations, state aid and compliance work, as well as private damages actions before the French courts. In addition, he serves as vice chairman of the competition commission of the International Chamber of Commerce and chairs its merger control working party.

Maxence Jonvel Senior Associate

Parigi

Admitted to practice in Paris and New York, Maxence brings an international perspective to his practice, focusing on aspects of French and EU competition law, including both transactional and litigation cases : merger control, antitrust, and state aid. He also has experience in the field of French restrictive and unfair practices.

Prior to joining Orrick as an associate, Maxence was a legal intern in a San Francisco-based law firm specialized in business immigration law. He previously interned with the Directorate General for Competition of the European Commission and with the energy department of Becker Büttner Held (Brussels office).

Frederic Lalance Partner

Parigi

Frédéric assists his clients in litigation arising from commercial, industrial and financial disputes, corporate law and insolvency proceedings, both before the French courts and in multi-jurisdictional cases – notably in Africa before the courts of OHADA jurisdictions.

He also assists his clients in international arbitration and alternative dispute resolution proceedings.

Frédéric advises French and foreign groups in investigations by administrative or judicial authorities involving bribery and corruption issues. He has deep experience in internal investigations (national and cross-border), and in the implementation of compliance programs.

Frédéric is serving a three-year term (2025-2027) as a member of the Paris Bar Council. He is consistently ranked as a leading litigator in France by the major legal benchmarking directories. He is the author of several publications on developments in litigation and anti-corruption regulation.

Alexis Marraud des Grottes Partner

Parigi

Recommended by Legal 500 EMEA in Mergers & Acquisitions, Alexis is key counsel to French and international listed and non-listed companies, private equity and hedge funds, managers, boards and families.

He advises on investments and divestments, securities issues, cross-border and complex transactions, strategic negotiations and sensitive litigation. He is "one of the best players in the market" (Legal 500) and is an authority on issues related to governance, restructuring, as well as on shareholder activism.

Alexis has advised many world leading companies, including:  Herige in the sale of its trading branch (materials, public works and natural stones) to Samse, BAE Systems in the acquisition of Eurostep, Alcentra and Fidera in their investment in Pierre & Vacances, Air France-KLM in its relations with KLM and the Dutch State, Veolia on the acquisition of Suez, LVMH in the acquisition of Tiffany, Euro Disney regarding the tender offer of The Walt Disney Company, L’Oréal on a share buyback from Swiss-based Nestlé and a sale to Nestlé of its stake in Galderma, and Club Med on the tender offer by Chinese conglomerate Fosun. He has also advised Oeneo in connection with the tender offer of its controlling shareholder, Naturex in connection with a takeover bid by Givaudan, the board of directors of Zodiac in relation to its merger with Safran, and Metrovacesa sale of its stake in Gecina. He additionally deals with issues related to token and crypto-currency and crypto-assets issues, including structuring and setting up issuing entities and related services.

Alexis regularly publishes and intervenes in conferences and provides training on capital market, governance and M&A and he regularly lectures at the business school EM Lyon and Paris Dauphine University. He has been a member of several working groups, including the working group on public offers of the Legal High Committee for Financial Markets of Paris. The French Financial Market Authority (Autorité des marches financiers - AMF) has invited Alexis to join its consultative Commission on Disclosures and Corporate Finance as a capital markets law specialist.

Jean-Pierre Martel Partner

Parigi

He is called on by boards and management teams to advise on mergers, divestitures, corporate acquisitions and restructurings as well as litigations and arbitrations. He is the founding partner of the premier French boutique Rambaud Martel, which combined with Orrick’s global platform in 2006.

Jean-Pierre has recently had a hand in the most significant cross-border deals in the French market. His work includes advising the board of Alstom on the $17 billion sale of its power units to General Electric, counseling L’Oréal on buying back 8% of its own capital from Nestlé, associated with the sale of assets, advising Peugeot’s family on the restructuring of Peugeot SA’s capital which involved China’s Dongfeng Motor Group and the French state, the board of Club Méditerranée in the context of competing take-over bids from China’s Fosun Group and Italia’s Bonomi’s Group, the board of Areva in the financial restructuring of the company.  

Chambers & Partners recognized Jean-Pierre as an “Individual Star” in Corporate/M&A, noting that he is a “seasoned and highly-respected M&A practitioner whose experience covers a wide range of transactional activities.

Jean-Pierre has also developed very substantial litigation and arbitration experience, being ranked Band 1 by Chambers in Dispute Resolution. Most notably, among his successes, the very high-profile Bernard Tapie Case where he has been assisting Consortium de Réalisation, the French government entity tasked with liquidating the assets of Crédit Lyonnais for the French State. Jean-Pierre won rulings from the Paris Court of Appeal in 2015 that withdrew initial arbitral awards that had required CDR to pay €404 million to Tapie’s liquidators and companies and sentenced them to repay CDR the full amount plus interests and costs. He has just succeeded in obtaining visible Court decisions which have released from any criminal liability charged persons with tax fraud.

Jean-Pierre also serves as an arbitrator in ad hoc, ICC and AFA arbitration proceedings.

He speaks and publishes regularly.

Jean-Pierre is the founder and a member of the board of the Institute for Brain and Spinal Cord Disorders - ICM, a state-approved foundation which is on its way to becoming the leading international research center in Europe in the Neurosciences.