Eversheds Sutherland advises Harmonic Drive on its conversion into a European stock corporation (Societas Europaea – SE)

Eversheds Sutherland advised Harmonic Drive AG, a technological leader in the area of high-precision drive technology headquartered in Limburg an der Lahn, Germany, on its conversion into a European stock corporation. This concerned all aspects of corporate law as well as labour and employment law of the conversion process. The conversion into an SE was decided upon at an extraordinary general meeting in December 2019 and became effective upon registration with the commercial register on 17 January 2020. The company has maintained its two-tier board structure consisting of a management board and a supervisory board.

Harmonic Drive SE provides high-precision drive technology solutions and is the technological market leader in the production of play-free high-precision innovative drive technology products for highly demanding industrial applications. Harmonic Drive SE’s gears and drives are used in important key industries such as robotics, machine tools, defence technology, medical engineering, aerospace and automotive and range from servo and planetary gears to custom-made drives based on individual clients’ specifications. In the financial year 2018, Harmonic Drive group including subsidiaries in France, the UK, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Spain generated a turnover of 120 million Euros.

The legal form of an SE enables the company to position the brand more strongly on the international market and to continue to achieve further growth together with its subsidiaries.

The Eversheds Sutherland team was led by Partners Dr. Christian Mense (Corporate/M&A), Marco Ferme (Employment, both Munich) and Dr. Nina Springer (Employment, Hamburg) and further included Associates Martin Sanftleben, Sophia Münzel (both Corporate/M&A) and Thomas Graf (Employment, all Munich).