Digital Business Law
The digital transformation already enables electronic submissions and queries to the commercial register. There are also efforts, for example, to enable the online establishment of corporations (e.g. GmbH and UG) without the participants having to appear before a court, notary or any other authorities in person. In the future, by way of online incorporation, corporations could be registered with the commercial register within ten working days, which on average would result in considerable time savings compared to the analog incorporation procedure existing today.
Furthermore, artificial intelligence will be used in the context of mergers and acquisitions. The large amounts of data usually generated in the course of due diligence can be reviewed, categorised and processed much more quickly and cost-efficiently than it would be possible with a conventional review by lawyers.
The digital transformation has also created new forms of corporate finance. These are open to all companies, but are particularly popular with start-ups, which are usually already very technology-experienced and -skilled, and which can easily find new sources of finance by digital means.
An interesting funding method used in this context is crowdfunding, which enables a large number of individual investors to make small amounts available to finance companies or projects of their choice. The crowdfunding process is usually carried out completely online and is free of many regulatory restrictions that have to be observed for conventional financing via the capital market.
Another new form of digitised financing is the so-called token, which is often also purchased by small investors. Tokens appear in many different forms, ranging from classic corporate investments to classic financing to mere vouchers or even merely ideal values. Although tokens are very flexible and can generally be designed to suit various needs, they can also be used for other purposes. However, in certain cases strict regulatory requirements may apply. Therefore, it is recommended to have the planned design of tokens legally examined as early as possible.
Tokens are often designed as smart contracts using blockchain technology. Although this is primarily a matter of technical design, from a legal point of view it is important to ensure that these smart contracts are carefully designed and do not contain any errors, for in many cases the later modification of smart contracts is not possible.
The digital transformation also creates new challenges in the area of corporate succession and inheritance law. For example, in the case of data, fundamental legal questions of ownership, access and succession arise. We support you and your company in all fundamental questions of succession planning.
