Finance Monthly Global Awards 2018 Edition

SWITZERLAND ASSOCIATIONS AND FOUNDATIONS LAW FIRM OF THE YEAR Firm Profile From the very beginning, the intention of the founder of the single law firm was focused on helping individuals, groups of persons and SMEs to find a reasonable and materially fair solution to complex disputes. As a lawyer, Isabel Kühnlein Specker is engaged with the most diverse litigations, disputes and problems in the field of inheritance law and the administration and distribution of estates under heirs, with Swiss foundation law, association law, directors’ and officers’ liability law, Corporate Governance and Compliance, labour law (including disputes with trade unions) as well as various other disputes from other areas of civil law (without divorce), commercial law, the Swiss Code of obligations in general, competition law or public business law. Her work also includes the strategic development, restructuring and care of corporate foundations with family, social and philanthropic purposes (so-called mixed foundations) in particular in the function of a board member. In foundation law, her attention is focused on the observation and protection of the hypothetical will and the given guidelines of the original will of founders as well as on the implementation and fulfillment of all foundation purposes, especially post- mortem. Her work has also included the strategic reorganisation of associations, also as a president of a board of an SME. From the beginning of her professional career, Isabel Kühnlein Specker was immediately entrusted with the handling of litigations and disputes relating to high profile cases. Isabel Kühnlein Specker is therefore used to writing complex cases and very comprehensive legal documents with the greatest possible independence. Since the beginning of her career, she has been used to litigate, to exchange and negotiate various different standpoints with well-known law firms and their exponents as her counterparties in particular or with high profile experts, and to finding good solutions also during litigation. Due to its structures, the firm has proven its flexibility, also when a “round-the-clock” commitment is needed. ABOUT ISABEL KÜHNLEIN SPECKER Isabel Kühnlein Specker dedicated her youth to daily professional classical ballet training and has won a Migros Culture Award. At the age of twenty, she quit the ballet and quickly obtained the Swiss Federal Matura in Economics, and later, during her legal studies at the University of Zurich, took care of the entire accounting of the Swiss association “Vorort des Schweiz. Handels- und Industrie-Vereins (SHIV; later “economiesuisse”). After a court internship, she worked for one of the best known leading commercial law firms in Zurich. Accompanied only by her two small children (aged 3 and 6), she then obtained as a married “single mum” a Masters degree (LL.M.) in EC Law in the UK (Essex, with distinction) and worked afterwards for two known commercial Zurich law firms. During all these years she was involved as an attorney in commercial, banking (including money laundering), directors’ and officers’ liability and inheritance disputes and court litigations, the preparation of expert opinions in these fields as well as in the field of public banking and commercial law and was involved in numerous M&A law cases (member of Due Diligence team). In June 2005, she was elected by a supervisory authority to represent a family on the board of trustees of a major Swiss foundation. From 2010 she was for eight years (honorary) president of an SME board of directors and its committee in the field of art (around 35 employees) in the legal form of an association, which was successfully strategically realigned during the financial and debt crisis. ANWALTSKANZLEI KÜHNLEIN SPECKER Publications Isabel Kuhnlein Specker: Points of contro- versy: scope and limits of extraterritorial jurisdiction under merger control laws: time for reforms? (with particular reference to the EC Merger Regulation, 146 S.; “with distinc- tion”), in: (https://books.google.ch/books) Areas of Expertise • Foundation law (especially mixed foundations with family foundation purposes) • Inheritance law and administration distribution of estates • Commercial law & Company law • Corporate Governance and Compliance • Directors’ and officers’ liability law • Employment law (including trade union law) • Banking law • Association law • Public commercial law • Competition law • Lawsuits in general in all civil matters (without divorce) Contacts Anwaltskanzlei Kühnlein Specker Isabel Kühnlein Specker, LL.M. (UK) Rechtsanwältin – Attorney at law Theaterstrasse 3, 8400 Winterthur / ZH Tel.: +41 (0) 43 343 99 05 Mobile: +41 (0) 79 734 76 34 Mail: isabel.kuehnlein@kuehnlein.ch Finance Monthly Global Awards 2018 www.finance-monthly.com 33 SWI D