As Baker McKenzie marks 15 years in Luxembourg, co-founder and Managing Partner Jean-François Findling reflects on the firm’s founding vision and the challenges that continue to shape Luxembourg’s legal and tax landscape.
What marked the beginning of Baker McKenzie’s journey, and how did the Firm evolve from its early days?
What marked our beginning — and this deserves emphasis — was a spirit of enthusiasm and commitment. We started as a small team, tasked with meeting the expectations of both clients and the network during the first years, across an ever-growing range of topics and increasingly diverse fields. It was a colossal task, carried out by the pioneers and founding team with the conviction that we were building something strong, but always with genuine enthusiasm.
The evolution was gradual: an initial phase of rapid growth, followed by stabilization through process improvements and the establishment of an extremely professional organization focused on maintaining excellence and retaining talent. This element was
central.
A key pillar of our development was the expansion of our offering beyond Baker McKenzie’s historical strengths — most notably M&A, tax and finance — to cover a full range of disciplines according to our clients’ needs, including litigation and arbitration, employment and real estate.
How have client expectations shifted over the past 15 years, and has the Firm implemented any specific strategies to address them?
At the beginning, our involvement was more focused on specific technical expertise, often supporting specific issues for cases managed by other offices across our network. Today, and for several years now, our clients expect us to play a much more comprehensive role — often a central one — as their primary advisor.
This shift is mainly linked to the rise of the alternative funds industry in Luxembourg. Now, we are in direct contact with decision-makers — whether asset managers, family offices or corporates — who entrust us with complete assignments that we coordinate from Luxembourg, mobilizing different disciplines and expertise and, where necessary, several offices in the network. Centralized cross-border assistance from Luxembourg has become a highly valued service for our clients.
Fifteen years ago, our work was more “structuring oriented.” Today, it is also more transactional, with a broader and more strategic level of support. To accompany this shift, we have strengthened the seniority of our teams, consolidated our partnership, and developed a robust platform relying on all of Baker McKenzie’s knowhow and history: knowledge sharing, best practices, contract templates, and global expertise in different fields.
The evolution of our Firm has been based on our ability to capitalize on its history and resources, putting them at the service of increasingly complex transactions managed from Luxembourg.
What are the main recent legal and tax issues in Luxembourg?
In recent months, we have seen a clear upturn in the market, with a recovery in investments and transactions involving Luxembourg. This rebound is accompanied by positive signals from the new government, which seems fully aware of the need to continue strengthening the country’s attractiveness, particularly in private equity and investment funds. The draft law on the taxation of carried interest illustrates this intent and should send a strong signal to market players.
At the same time, the recent arrival of many international firms confirms the lasting confidence of investors and market players in the Luxembourg marketplace.
Historically, Luxembourg was an atypical market compared to other European centers, with a limited local industrial base. Today, we see a normalization: a more solid and comprehensive financial industry, generating broader legal needs. This is especially true in business litigation and arbitration — areas that were more marginal for us a few years ago but are now gaining momentum.
Looking ahead, what would you say are your projects and ambitions for the future of Baker McKenzie Luxembourg?
Our ambition is clear: to continue expanding and, more than ever, to position ourselves on high value cases involving very sophisticated cross-border transactions.
This means strengthening all our teams, gradually expanding the partnership, and enabling the next generation of partners to be ambassadors for the Firm in new markets.
An essential objective is to continue structuring our organization so that our clients feel they are working with a single global firm, not just a local branch. We want every client who approaches the Luxembourg office to benefit from seamless access to the Baker McKenzie platform and to partners capable of supporting them anywhere in the world, across all the disciplines they need.
