Bio

Christian Schmidt is a German attorney-at-law admitted by the Warsaw Bar Association as a foreign lawyer. Specializes in legal services for foreign investments in Poland and in Polish-German legal relations. Advises, in particular, German-speaking clients investing in Poland as well as Polish companies and institutions conducting transactions in Germany and other German-speaking countries. Heads the GESSEL German Desk team. Christian has experience in many legal areas, including mergers and acquisitions and direct investments in industries such as metallurgy, construction and real estate, automotive, food processing, pharmaceuticals, transportation, mass media, banking and insurance. Advises, among other entities, German banks and financial institutions granting loans to Polish entities as well as companies involved in various projects in Poland. An important part of his business is providing day-to-day advice in areas such as corporate law, civil law and labour law to Polish clients who have subsidiaries or operate in Germany (German law) and to German-speaking clients in Poland (Polish law). In 1995, began practicing at the Frankfurt law firm Boesebeck Droste, moving to its Warsaw office in 1997. From 2000 to 2004, was the managing partner at the Warsaw office of Lovells, an international law firm. Since October 2005, has been a partner at GESSEL, where he heads the German Desk team. Prior to practicing law, worked as an adjunct professor in the Central and Eastern Europe Department at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Private Law in Hamburg from 1982 to 1983 and 1986 to 1989. From 1989 to 1994, served as an adjunct professor at the Department of International, European and Public Law and at the Institute for Foreign and International Economic Law (AIW), as well as at the Environmental Law Research Center at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.