People
Thales Mertens
Biography
Thales is Head of Belgium Litigation & Contracts. He specialises in restructuring and insolvency-related matters (both contentious and non-contentious) and post-closing litigation, both local and international, in addition to more general contract-related advice.
He can draw on over 20 years of experience in advising both banks and corporate multinationals on complex reorganisations, restructurings and insolvency proceedings. He has also acted in a broad range of complex post-M&A, real estate and commercial disputes (both in court and in arbitration). In addition to this contentious experience, Thales advises both suppliers and customers on a wide variety of commercial contracts involving many different jurisdictions and sector.
Practice areas
- Disputes
- Corporate and commercial litigation
- Financial services litigation
- White-collar defense and global investigations
- Restructuring insolvency and capital solutions
Sectors
- Consumer and retail
- Banks
- Real estate
- Private capital
Selected experience
- A multinational commodity trading company in a highly publicised multijurisdictional restructuring of a major player in the zinc production and mining industry.
- A consortium of lenders on the restructuring of a major Belgian fashion group in one of the most publicised restructurings since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
- A Belgian software company on a post-M&A dispute with one of its former shareholders relating to the conditions of the transfer of his shares.
- The shareholders of a large super market chain on the sale of their participation, and ensuing corporate litigation (including arbitration) initiated by a minority shareholder, who seeks to prevent the sale of its participation to a third party.
Education
- Degree, Law, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), 2003
- LLM, Cornell University, 2004
Admissions
- Member of the Brussels bar, 2004
Languages
- Dutch
- English
- French