Carl Clottens
Expertise
He advises listed and non-listed companies, cooperatives and non-profit associations on a wide range of financial and corporate matters, including corporate governance and compliance and handles matters relating to corporate investigations and corporate litigation.
-
Work highlights & track record
Carl regularly assists clients in highly regulated sectors such as real estate companies and financial institutions. He also works for family-owned businesses, state-owned enterprises, and public & private partnerships
- Assisted the Crelan group in a variety of strategic matters including the acquisition of AXA Bank Belgium.
- Assisted Atenor and several prominent Belgian REITs in multiple rights issues and accelerated bookbuild offerings on Euronext Brussels.
- Assisted the family shareholders of Asco in the sale to Spirit Aerosystems.
- Acted as transaction counsel in the creation and listing of Nextensa through a business combination of Leasinvest Real Estate and Extensa.
- Assisted a global alternative asset manager in the liquidation of a Belgian real estate portfolio through a series of asset deals.
- Assisted DSM Venturing, Planet A Ventures and Gimv in their Series A investment in Paleo.
- Assisted the Belgian State in the restructuring of the NMBS-SNCB group (Belgian national railways).
[A1] (“regulated real estate companies”)
-
Qualifications & ancillary functions
Carl graduated magna cum laude from the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in 2004. In 2011, he obtained a Ph.D. at the same university with a doctoral thesis on Proportionality of voting rights and risk-bearing in stock companies, which was awarded the triannual Prize Pierre Coppens.
He was admitted to the Brussels bar in 2004. Before joining NautaDutilh in 2024, he worked for 20 years at a top tier Belgian law firm, where he was appointed counsel in 2019.
Carl combines his practical experience as a lawyer with academic functions at the University of Leuven and the University of Antwerp, where he has lectured for many years on Corporate Governance and International M&A. He is on the editorial board of TRV-RPS, a leading Belgian corporate law review. He is a member of the Belgian Centre for Company Law (BCV-CDS) and an alternate member of the Advisory Committee on Companies and Associations (CASAVV). Carl was closely involved in the preparation of the new Belgian Code of Companies and Associations adopted in 2019.
-
Publications
Carl is the author of more than fifty academic publications in reference books and journals, both national and international, in the fields of corporate and financial law.
He is co-author of a treatise on Corporations and Partnerships in Belgium in the International Encyclopaedia of Laws (Kluwer Law International), a general treatise on Companies (Kluwer) and two major reviews of jurisprudence covering all corporate law jurisprudence published in Belgian law reviews during the past two decades (TPR).
Besides, he has written on a wide variety of selected topics such as cross-border reorganisations and corporate mobility, corporate governance, multiple and loyalty voting rights shares, classes of shares, takeover bids, winding-up of companies, and partnership forms. Carl is regularly invited to speak at conferences in his areas of expertise.