Avocado spin-off launches in Frankfurt and Munich.
Ferox Legal also launches in Frankfurt.
At the turn of the year, four former partners of the law firm Avocado have joined forces to form the new firm Ferox Legal. The focus will be the areas of corporate, real estate law and litigation.
Dr. Dennis Geissler, Jürgen Heilbock, Thomas Hopf and Dr. Johannes Weisser have founded the law firm Ferox Legal with offices in Frankfurt and Munich as of January 1, 2022. Their main focus is to advise in the areas of corporate law/M&A, real estate business law and litigation. The four founding partners were all previously partners at Avocado Rechtsanwälte.
“Ferox” in Latin stands for “fearless.” Accordingly, the partners aim to advise companies, entrepreneurs in particular “when the dark clouds gather”, i.e. liability risks loom, for example in the case of failed transactions or shareholder disputes.
The founding partners
For many years, the four founding partners have been advising medium-sized companies and family offices as well as international corporations with German subsidiaries, start-ups, VC funds as well as executive boards, managing directors, supervisory boards and boards of trustees and foreign law firms without a German office. His substantive focus is in and at the interface between corporate and antitrust law as well as real estate, transportation law, corporate compliance, arbitration and contentious proceedings.
Geissler joined Avocado’s Frankfurt office in September 2016 as an equity partner in the litigation department. Previously, he was an associate at Nachmann and a senior associate at Salger Rechtsanwälte, among others. The 37-year-old’s main areas of advice are corporate and commercial law as well as transport law disputes. Since 2017, he has been admitted as an arbitrator and lawyer at the DIS German Institution of Arbitration.
Heilbock was most recently a corporate partner at Avocado for almost four years. Other stations in his career included many years as a partner at Taylor Wessing and Schalast & Partner. The 56-year-old mainly advises on corporate disputes, company sales/management buy-outs as well as general corporate law of stock corporations and limited liability companies including transformation law.
Real estate lawyer Hopf worked as a partner at Faegre & Benson and Norton Rose Fulbright for a good nine years each before joining Avocado in May 2019. The 62-year-old’s legal practice focuses on real estate transactions for national and international investment companies, insurance companies and family offices.
Weisser was most recently a partner at Avocado for 15 years; prior to that, he was a partner at Luther from 1998 to 2005. Weisser, who is also 62 years old, advises medium-sized companies as well as national and international corporations on all matters of corporate and commercial law. He has a particular focus on M&A transactions and restructurings as well as financing rounds for start-ups. In the area of antitrust law, he handles merger control proceedings in particular and advises on antitrust and corporate law issues in the regulatory environment.
The firm is already planning cooperations with other law firms. In the medium term, Ferox Legal is also striving for continuous growth and wants to strengthen itself in a targeted manner.