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Public Takeovers in Germany Newsletter 2025

02 April 2025

The eighth edition of our “Public Takeovers in Germany” newsletter provides an overview of public takeovers carried out in Germany in 2024 under the German Securities Acquisition and Takeover Act (WpÜG).

Welcome to our yearly newsletter “Public Takeovers in Germany”.

Our newsletter provides among other things a statistical analysis of public takeovers in Germany during the year of 2024.

Further we showcase what we consider to be the most noteworthy public takeover bids of the past year in Germany. In 2024, this were (i) the takeover offer regarding Covestro AG by ADNOC International Germany Holding AG and (ii) the takeover offer and the subsequent delisting purchase offer regarding MorphoSys AG by Novartis BidCo AG.

Finally, we discuss current legal developments which are relevant for the German public takeover market. This newsletter first discusses the judgement issued by the German High Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) on 31 January 2024 (Case No. II ZB 5/22 – Vodafone/KDG) on the appropriateness of the compensation and settlement in the event of structural measures of listed companies. Furthermore, we summarize the most important takeover law implications of the government draft of the Second Future Financing Act of 5 December 2024 (BR-printed matter 599/24 – Zukunftsfinanzierungsgesetz II).

This newsletter concludes with an overview of public offers in 2024 on which our law firm Hogan Lovells provided legal advice.

Authored by Dr. Tim Oliver Brandi, LL.M. (Columbia), Dr. Mike Karl Schmidt and Irina Matevosyan.