News-Archive

Oppenhoff has represented Deutsche Lufthansa in a successful action before the General Court of the European Union (T-218/18). In a judgment of 19 May 2021, the Court annulled a decision of the European Commission by which the authority had authorized the state of Rhineland-Palatinate to cover operating losses of Hahn Airport of up to 25.3 million euro in the time period from 2017 to 2021.

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Last Friday, 21 May 2021, the Bundestag passed the German Works Council Modernisation Act [Betriebsrätemodernisierungsgesetz]. Core issues of the Act are the strengthening of the work conducted by works councils and digitisation. There has been and is plenty of criticism of the changes. In particular, the legislator has failed to address the question of whether the co-determination criterion for introducing and using technical devices to monitor conduct and performance need to be modified in view of the ongoing digitisation of corporate processes.

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Oppenhoff has advised the private equity house Finatem on the IPO of its portfolio company hGears AG. The manufacturer of mission-critical high-precision gear parts and components with a focus on e-cars and e-bikes aims to use the issue proceeds of around EUR 62 million to further promote organic growth in the e-mobility sector.

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Today, RIMOWA is auctioning four so-called Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) of works of art. NFTs are digital certificates stored in the blockchain that serve as proof of ownership of digital and real products. In March 2021, a digital work of art was already sold as an NFT for a record sum of over 69 million euros. Real products can also be linked to NFTs. With all the hype surrounding NFTs, this raises legal questions.

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Cyber-Attacken auf Unternehmen häufen sich. Viele Unternehmen trifft es unvorbereitet. In diesem interdisziplinären Workshop bereiten wir Sie auf den Ernstfall vor. Unsere Experten zeigen Präventions- und Reaktionsmöglichkeiten anhand eines beispielhaften Krisenszenarios auf.

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With Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons notifying violations of Union law (Whistleblower Directive), the member states have agreed on a uniform protection of whistleblowers insofar as they expose violations of EU law. The Directive is to be implemented into national law by the end of this year.

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In many companies in Germany, company doctors are all set to vaccinate employees against Covid-19. The official go-ahead for this is imminent and employers now have cause to hope for the "return" of their workers from home office and a normalisation of company procedures. At the same time, however, this gives rise to very important questions of labour law and data protection law, which we would like to answer for you below:

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According to a recent ruling of the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) (judgement of 10 February 2021, file no. KZR 63/18), general terms and conditions that award the customer of a cartel participant lump-sum damages in the amount of 5 to 15 % are valid under certain conditions. This landmark ruling is not only relevant for ongoing cartel damages litigation. It also provides a blueprint for the permissible drafting of lump-sum cartel damages clauses in supply contracts and could thus make it much easier for cartel-affected companies to quantify damages in future civil proceedings.

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Oppenhoff has advised TIMETOACT Software & Consulting GmbH and the two shareholders Felix Binsack and Hermann Ballé on the acquisition of a majority stake by the private equity investor Equistone Partners. TIMETOACT shareholders Felix Binsack and Hermann Ballé will remain operationally active as managing directors and hold a significant stake in the company.

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The European Commission has imposed fines of €48 million on Deutsche Bahn (DB), Austrian Railways (ÖBB) and the National Company of Belgian Railways (SNCB) for cartel agreements in freight transport involving "blocktrains." All three companies have admitted their involvement in the cartel. Customers of the rail companies should check at an early stage whether they are entitled to damage claims for excessive freight costs against the three companies.

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