Overview
Bettina Holzberger focuses her practice on labor and employment law. Her practice covers cross-border transaction work as well as traditional labor and employment matters. In the area of labor and employment law, she advises clients, inter alia, on the drafting of a broad range of contracts (including traditional employment contracts as well as bonus plans, service agreements for directors and officers, and termination and assignment agreements for employees as well as executives), often in an international context that requires coordinating the advice of foreign counsel. Bettina regularly represents employers and elaborates procedural defense strategies before various courts. These trials frequently involve lawsuits against unfair dismissal; other labor and employment law trials have included defending clients against allegations that collective bargaining agreements apply or that fixed-term employment is ineffective, or against claims in relation to parental leave and holidays.
Bettina regularly supports nationally and internationally operating companies in the context of merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions, prior to and after the acquisition, and to help clients achieve the goal of integrating the new workforce and collective structure (e.g., works council) into the existing business.
Bettina has deep knowledge about employee data protection, compliance and immigration of non-EU citizens for the purpose of employment within the European Union.
Results
- Advising a client on the successful acquisition of 29 hotels in Germany and the Netherlands for a total value of US$260 million from a leading European hospitality company
- Advising on co-determination issues and the legally required involvement of employees in relation to the transformation of an internationally operating health care stock company into a Societas Europaea (SE)
- Advising a drug producer on the acquisition of significant parts of one of the worldwide leading pharmaceutical suppliers in a mixed share and asset deal
- Advising an automotive supplier with more than 1,000 employees on its out-of-court restructuring that included a significant reduction of its workforce, inter alia, in conducting mass dismissal notifications, works council consultation and challenging social selection
- Advising a US textile group in its acquisition of a French underwear company, with subsidiaries in Germany, from an investment fund, including post-acquisition counsel on drafting of a European-wide “one-fits-it-all” employment contract
- Advising a leading German defense engineering group on various employment-related matters
