18. September 2018

ARQIS has advised the employee representatives of Traton, formerly Volkswagen Bus & Truck, on the change of the company’s legal form.

In order to operate as an European Stock Corporation (Societas Europaea/SE), employees and board entered into an agreement on the future involvement of the employees.

Negotiations were extremely complex, as primarily MAN and Scania were to be consolidated into Traton SE and the interests of both brands had to be considered. Employees from a total of 33 EU and EEC countries formed a Special Negotiating Body. With joint forces, the negotiations in Bad Gögging and Stockholm could be concluded within a short space of time.

Volkswagen Bus & Truck GmbH’s initial conversion into a German Aktiengesellschaft (AG) a few months ago was one condition for the conversion into a SE to take place. In 2017, the subsidiary of Volkswagen had more than 81,000 employees worldwide.

The labour law team at ARQIS has twelve members around partner Dr. Andrea Panzer-Heemeier and is very experienced at working at the interface to corporate law and M&A. It had also advised on the employment protection of about 16,000 employees of Kaiser’s Tengelmann, which was a condition for the ministerial approval of its merger with EDEKA.

Advisors to employee representatives
ARQIS Rechtsanwälte (Dusseldorf): Dr. Andrea Panzer-Heemeier (lead; labour law), Dr. Christof Alexander Schneider (corporate law); Associate: Dr. Hendrik von Mellenthin (labour law)