Paul Van Hooghten

Paul Van Hooghten is the Council Director of The Conference Board's Legal Council since 2019. He is a Belgian lawyer admitted at the bar of Brussels. He is a specialist in M&A and has over 35 years of experience in advising on corporate law and corporate restructurings, corporate governance, international and domestic mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity, takeover bids and equity offerings.

Currently Paul is practicing as an Of Counsel in the Brussels Corporate M&A Group of the international law firm Jones Day. Until May 2018 he was a partner at the international law firm Linklaters. For 10 years he was there the head of the Belgian Corporate/M&A group (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. He was the managing partner of the New York office of the Belgian law firm 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 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 and officer in the board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Belgium (“AmCham”). By Royal Decree he was appointed as Belgian Advisor of Foreign Trade (1995-2009). Since 1999 Paul consistently has been named as a Belgian “leading individual” in the field of Corporate M&A in Chambers Global Directory; he is also listed as a leading lawyer in Legal 500, Who’s Who legal, Legal Experts and the IFLR Guide to the World’s Leading M&A Lawyers.