Key Points:

• Salans opens in Frankfurt
• Salans expands in Germany from successful Berlin base
• Salans targets German clients with German lawyers across the network
• Frankfurt focuses on M&A, Private Equity, Finance Litigation, International Real Estate and Tax
• Further lateral hires planned in Frankfurt

New Frankfurt Office

Salans, the international law firm, is growing its operations in Germany with a brand new team and office in Frankfurt-am-Main. Salans’ new Frankfurt office, which opens on 1 July 2008, will comprise an initial team of eight lawyers drawn from Aderhold Gassner and Salans’ existing Berlin office. The move comes two-and-half years after former law firm Haarmann Hemmelrath’s Berlin office became part of the Salans family and boosts the number of Salans’ offices to 20 worldwide.

Dariusz Oleszczuk, Salans’ Global Managing Partner says: “Our opening in Frankfurt is an essential component of our international strategy. We serve international German clients across our global network, with German lawyers located across our different offices as well as in Germany itself.

We have consolidated our presence in Berlin with an excellent team, and this move into Frankfurt is the start of a planned expansion in Germany. Our initial Frankfurt team provide a most promising base from which to develop this office.”

New Frankfurt team: focus and operations The initial eight-strong Frankfurt team will be made up of partners Dr. Matthias Haas and Holger Scheer, who, along with four associates, are moving to Salans from Aderhold Gassner, and Dr. Detlef Spranger, a partner with Salans’ Berlin office, together with another Berlin office associate. Further lateral hires are planned in due course.

The main focus of the Frankfurt team will be advising on company law, M&A, private equity, real estate, tax and litigation. The team’s litigation practice have a particular emphasis on the law relating to banking and capital markets.

The Frankfurt team will serve as both an extension of Salans’ current presence in the German legal market, as a springboard for further growth in Salans’ ability to support its international German clients and to support inbound Germany-related matters on a firmwide basis.

As Salans’ Managing Partner in Germany Andreas Ziegenhagen explains, the new Frankfurt team is a perfect fit for the Firm’s objectives: “The Berlin partners have been looking to open a Frankfurt office for some time as we already represent many clients in the Frankfurt area. A decisive factor for us in opening our new Frankfurt office is that we have the right team. We share the same high standards of client service with Holger Scheer and Matthias Haas and their colleagues. We are very excited that they are on board.”

Holger Scheer sees significant advantage in working from Salans’ strong international dimension: “Joining Salans offers a unique opportunity to extend our established work on a strong and expanding international platform. This move will allow us to meet our clients’ increasing demands for international advice to add to the scope of our previous legal services.”

Matthias Haas agrees: “Our areas of work and our clients, both professionally and strategically, complement the expertise in the Berlin office perfectly. We are very much looking forward to this collaborative venture.”

Information on Salans in Germany

Salans’ Berlin office has grown considerably since it joined Salans in 2006. It currently has 15 partners and a further 40 lawyers and tax advisors advising on tax law, company law/M&A, competition law, real estate law, banking and finance law, restructuring and insolvency, employment law and health care.

Salans in Germany provides a full-service offering for national and international companies. Via Salans GmbH Wirtschaftsprьfungsgesellschaft Steuerberatungsgesell-schaft, Salans in Germany offers additional services to those of Salans LLP, including tax advice, business management advice and auditing.

Information about Salans

Salans is an international commercial law firm with over 750 lawyers operating from 18 offices in ALMATY, BAKU, BARCELONA, BERLIN1, BRATISLAVA, BUCHAREST, BUDAPEST, ISTANBUL, KYIV, LONDON1, MADRID, MOSCOW, NEW YORK, PARIS, PRAGUE, SHANGHAI, ST. PETERSBURG and WARSAW. We also have operations in the Middle East in Doha, Qatar and the French Pacific. More information about Salans can be found at www.salans.com.

1 Salans LLP is a Limited Liability Partnership registered in London with Registration Number OC 316822. Registered Office Millennium Bridge House, 2 Lambeth Hill, London EC4V 4AJ, United Kingdom. Regulated by the Solicitors’ Reg ul ation Authority. A list of members of SALANS is available at the above Registered Office.