We assisted one of our clients in the acquisition of a multinational company based in Switzerland but with significant operations also in Japan, Singapore and the United States.

During the due diligence process a company sponsored "social plan" was identified in Switzerland which had originally been used to provide generous early retirement benefits associated with a redundancy programme. It transpired that although the redundancy programme had ended some years previously, employees retiring early were still granted benefits under the social plan and that there was now an expectation that enhanced benefits would be provided on any early retirement.

We estimated the liability and cost associated with the additional early retirement benefits and our client was able to use this information to negotiate a price reduction from the Seller.