Paul Van Hooghten

Paul Van Hooghten is a Belgian lawyer admitted at the bar of Brussels. He is a specialist in M&A and has over 30 years of experience in advising on corporate law and corporate restructurings, international and domestic mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity, takeover bids and equity offerings. In particular, Paul’s practice covered a number of Belgian and international private equity houses, multinational companies, financial institutions and organisations.

Until May 2018 he was a partner at the international law firm Linklaters. For 10 years he was the head of the Corporate/M&A group of Linklaters in Belgium (2007-2017) and a member of the management committee of the Belgian Linklaters offices. For several years he chaired the Belgian Linklaters China Desk as well as the Community Investment program of Linklaters in Belgium. He was the managing partner of the New York office of De Bandt, van Hecke & Lagae (now merged with Linklaters) from 1992 through 1996.

Paul holds a law degree from the University of Leuven (Belgium) (magna cum laude) and a Master Degree (MCL) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) (1984). He joined the Brussels bar in 1984. He is also the author of several publications on corporate and commercial law including the book “The European Takeover Directive and its implementation” published in 2009 by Oxford University Press. He is a regular speaker at conferences and is a guest lecturer at the University of Brussels.

He is a director in the boards of AmCham and of the charitable organisation United Fund for Belgium (until June 2018). By Royal Decree he was appointed as Belgian Advisor of Foreign Trade (1995-2009). Since 1999 until his retirement from Linklaters Paul has each year been named as a Belgian “leading individual” in the field of Corporate M&A in Chambers Global Directory; he was also listed as a leading lawyer in Who’s Who legal, Legal Experts and the IFLR Guide to the World’s Leading M&A Lawyers.