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European VC Landscape

Shawn Atkinson 合伙人

伦敦

As Europe's premier tech business advisors, Shawn and his team have overseen several hundred venture financings, private equity buyouts and M&A transactions over the course of the last decade. Leading venture capital and growth funds, private equity, and high-growth tech companies rely upon his unsurpassed industry knowledge as much as his relentless commitment to their business.

In addition to sheer volume of deals, Shawn's incomparable market insight stems from his leadership roles at Orrick, the only global firm focused on technology, and his experience working throughout the UK & Europe, North America and Asia. Shawn leads Orrick's London Corporate practice, its Global Emerging Markets practice and co-leads the Global Fintech team and the Global Technology Companies Practice Group. These complement his practice serving public and private companies in UK multi-jurisdictional and complex corporate transactions, including countless acquisitions and disposals, cross-border mergers, bankruptcy infused asset sales, recapitalisations and reorganisations. He is also a recognised leader in late stage venture transactions and in early stage private equity transactions in Europe and the emerging markets.

Shawn also advises early stage businesses across a number of sectors – including insurtech, Fintech, Crypto, SaaS, EdTech, HRTech, Marketplace and EnergyTech. He assists them from incorporation through to M&A exit, initial public offerings and other growth opportunities. His participation in the private equity and venture capital sector spans his entire career - with time spent in private practice, in-house and advising investors as well as investor-backed businesses-and affords him a deep knowledge and understanding of the industry and client needs and expectations.

Among the leading investment funds he has represented are ABN Amro Ventures, Acton Capital Partners, ABRY Partners, Accel Partners, Apax Partners, Bain Capital, Balderton Capital, Battery Ventures, Beringea, Bessemer Venture Partners, Black Pearls VC, Black Sheep Ventures, BMWi Ventures, Coatue Management, Columbia Capital, CommerzVentures, Evolvence, FTV Capital, Golden Gate Capital, Stepstone Group, Headway Capital Partners, Innova Capital, Kinnevik, KPS Capital Partners, Marlin Equity Partners, Mangrove Capital Partners, M/C Partners, One Peak, Oxx, Pearson Ventures, Piper Private Equity, Piton Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Sprints Capital, Summit Partners, Updata Partners, VNV Global and VEF.

Benjamin Cichostepski 合伙人

巴黎; Paris Tech Studio

Benjamin Cichostepski-Lesage leads Orrick’s Technology Companies Group in France from the 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 worldwide.

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 notably a recognized experience in assisting French companies seeking to establish themselves in the United States. He assists French start-ups throughout their growth overseas as well as a clientele of American investors or buyers.

From his first venture deal in 2006, where he represented Lightspeed Venture Partners in Wikio’s Series A, which became Teads, a company that he then accompanied for 11 years until its sale to Altice, Ben has led more than 260 Corporate Tech transactions and has been involved in the main exit transactions in recent years, particularly Franco-American ones (Neolane/Adobe, La Fourchette/TripAdvisor, Stupeflix/GoPro, eNovance/Red Hat, Regaind, Zenly/Snap, Teads/Altice, Getaround/Drivy, Glose/Medium, Sqreen/Datadog, Lalilo/Renaissance Learning, Tempow/Google, Context/Integral Ad Science, Monk/ACV Auctions, Cajoo/Flink).

Ben's leadership has contributed to placing the firm's Tech practice in the Top 3 of most active law firms in France (Capital Finance’s ranking of “the most active law firms in French venture capital" in 2019, 2020 and 2021 – Capital Finance is the weekly business newsletter of Les Echos, the French equivalent of FT and WSJ –, PitchBook's 2023 ranking).

Recognized as a key lawyer in the market in Venture and Tech Growth, Ben is ranked as the most active tech lawyer in France in 2019 by transaction volume in CFNews’ ranking (February 2020 – CFNews is the French equivalent of PitchBook and focuses on private equity data). He is also ranked by Chambers Europe and The Legal 500 EMEA in Private Equity - Venture Capital/Growth Capital since 2020. He was voted "Lawyer of the Year" in the 2023 edition of Best Lawyers France in the Venture Capital category.

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.

Dr. Sven Greulich, LL.M. (Cantuar), EMBA 合伙人

杜塞尔多夫

Dr. Sven Greulich, partner at Orrick's Düsseldorf office, guides technology companies of all stages and their financial sponsors through transformational corporate transactions. These deals include venture capital financings, technology acquisitions, buy-out M&A of technology companies and strategic cross-border investments/JVs.

Sven advises technology companies on complex cross-border mergers and acquisitions, and venture capital as well as growth investments, and provides general corporate counseling.

His clients include technology companies of all stages and their investors. Supported by a global and cross-practice team, he also counsels major corporations and scale-ups on international expansion and growth projects and has a special focus on in- and outbound German/US investments and joint ventures.

Sven is passionate about building a bridge for his clients from Germany to the US and other international technology hubs and to help them succeed in the international market. With a dual background in business and law, an entrepreneurial spirit, and experience in over 200 M&A transactions and financing rounds across many industries, Sven has a unique perspective, which inspires him to find the best strategic and commercially viable solution for his clients.

Sven volunteers with entrepreneur groups at the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management and the RWTH Aachen and regularly lectures at the WHU and the RWTH incubation and innovation centers on venture capital financings, start-up growth and corporate venture capital.

Sven's work has been repeatedly awarded, inter alia

• the leading German market publication JUVE ranks him as "frequently recommended for M&A, PE/VC and corporate advice. In each of its yearbooks since 2019, JUVE named Sven as one of Germany's top 15 attorneys for venture capital (the highest recognition for this category awarded by JUVE);
• the Legal500 Rankings EMEA for 2021 recommends Sven for “mid-sized international Corporate M&A deals (€100m-€500m)” and "Venture Capital Deals";
• Best Lawyers and Handelsblatt recommend him as top lawyer for M&A transactions (2021);
• Chambers Europe lists him as notable practitioner for venture capital (2021);
• in the 2017 edition of its Innovative Lawyers Report Europe, the Financial Times named Sven's work to connect start-ups with Germany's Mittelstand (mid-sized companies) a standout “for making bridges between Silicon Valley and Germany”; and
• since 2017, he has annually received the “Acritas Star Lawyer” award from the leading international legal research company Acritas based on clients' praise for Sven's responsiveness and business-oriented advice for technology companies.

Attilio Mazzilli 合伙人

米兰

Attilio Mazzilli is a corporate partner, member of the international Technology Companies Group and Head of the Italian Tech Group.

His practice focuses on cross-border and domestic mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital transactions. He advises high growth technology companies and Venture Capital firms in several areas, including corporate and securities law, mergers and acquisitions, and listings. Several standout technology companies and their founders have turned to Attilio, who currently represents the same at all stages of their life-cycle.