Law Department Management Blog
Nestlé Europe undertook a massive tender process, as described in Global Counsel, Sept. 2003 at 25. With a goal to appoint one primary advisor for M&A, finance and capital markets and one for antitrust, the law department, under general counsel Hans-Peter Frick, “invited 30 firms that we had worked with or knew of to participate in the tender process.”
Nestlé chose to meet 12 of those 30 firms, but the article does not describe the reasons why they eliminated the other 18 firms. Each of the 12 firms prepared a two-hour presentation and introduced their partners at a session in Frankfurt, Germany.
Those presentations allowed the project team to reduce the firms in the running to six. Each of those firms were then asked to spend a half day in Vevey, Switzerland where their lawyers and Nestlé lawyers interacted more.
At the end, out of the original 30, shrunk to 12, then to 6, two firms made the cut and were appointed