Interview with Stéphane Sylvestre

DealCockpit: Can you introduce yourself?

Stéphane Sylvestre: My name is Stéphane Sylvestre, I have been a lawyer since 1998, and I now practise at the Paris Bar. For about twelve years I worked at Deloitte & Touche Juridique et Fiscal where I was mainly involved in corporate law, acquisition due diligence, and group reorganisation. I then worked for two different firms specialising in private equity and mergers & acquisitions. Today, I'm a partner at Intervista, where I continue to advise all types of clients on fundraising, M&A, and employee stock ownership plans. I am also very active in conflict prevention, management and resolution between partners.

DC: Could you also tell us about Intervista, the firm in which you are a partner?

Stéphane S.: The firm Intervista was set up in 2007 by several founding partners who no longer identified with the values and methods conveyed by large structures such as the Big 4 or Anglo-Saxon law firms. They wanted to create a firm on a human scale, initially dedicated to cinema and broadcasting, and later extending to all creative activities.

In these segments, we have the unique advantage of having several departments: fiscal law for individuals and companies of all sizes, employment law, corporate law, film and broadcasting law, and dispute resolution. All these departments can work separately or together, depending on the nature of the case and the difficulties encountered by our clients. What sets us apart is that we deploy our resources according to the complexity of the case. This can range from a single person for a simple matter to several teams for more complex issues that encompass several areas of law.

DC: Are you the only specialist corporate lawyer in the firm?

Stéphane S.: No, we are two partners, Frédéric Guy, the corporate partner who pioneered this activity when Intervista was founded, and myself, who joined much later. We are also fortunate to have two collaborators in the corporate team, Sophie Tapiero and Julia Robic, as well as an intern at all times. The corporate activity can only function at full capacity with the contribution of all these players.

DC: What are the major challenges facing your customer base (film, broadcasting, creative industries) compared to the customer base you have known before?

Stéphane S.: I'm inclined to say that the problems are always the same for all companies. We don't only have clients in the broadcasting and cinema sectors, but we do have a lot of them, and they have the same problems as other companies: they need to grow and to do that, they need financing. When you are a young company, financing is more likely to come from equity than from bank financing. Equity financing involves raising funds, which implies a whole process that our customers are not necessarily familiar with, and we are there to provide them with guidance and support. However, this is not unique to this business sector.

What's perhaps more specific to this industry is that our customers don't sell machines, it's the personalities that are important. It is therefore essential to find ways, in the day-to-day, of attracting and retaining talent. For example, by creating joint subsidiaries that host projects developed between young (or not so young), talented but as yet little-known producers and larger, more established production companies. The former contribute their talent, and the latter supervise and finance their work. Setting up the contractual relationships between the two parties in these rather unusual joint ventures, or labels as they are known in the industry, requires both a degree of technical expertise and a good knowledge of industry practices.

We are also often asked to find a way of attracting the interest of key people in the company's development, including in the event of raising funds or even a disposal. In this respect, the use of free shares, BSPCEs and other mechanisms for associating talent with the company's capital enables us to deploy all our legal, social and fiscal expertise. In this case, our job is to find intelligent solutions tailored to each situation, because no two situations are identical.

DC: Especially as the legislative framework in this area changes frequently?

Stéphane S.: I would be inclined to say too often, but we should not complain too much about the frequency of reforms if legislation becomes more flexible. And finally, it forces us to stay informed, connected and very agile.

In the light of the evolving nature of French law, case law and taxation, we cannot give our clients general advice. Each situation, each transaction that needs to be structured, each equity investment will have a different strategic focus depending on its timeframe and the objectives of the parties involved. And what applies today will surely have to be re-examined through a new prism tomorrow.

DC: Do you have a particularly memorable use case you can share?

Stéphane S.: I worked on a case where we had to respond very quickly to a conflict between partners in a family business. I was on the side of the minority partner, and we had to show very quickly that our client was ready to bang their fist on the table, but also open to discussion. For the first letter we sent out, we had to find the right balance between firmness and flexibility. We gradually succeeded in finding a negotiated solution between the parties, which enabled our client to sell their stake for a tidy sum. This case is a perfect illustration of the complexity of a case that Intervista might handle, a case that began with a classic conflict between partners, for which we had to negotiate and find a compromise agreement, an agreement that was implemented through a share transfer transaction, for which we had to measure and secure the fiscal consequences for the partners and the company concerned while at the same time organising the termination of our client's employment contract. A fine example of the cross-use of the firm's multiple skills.

DC: Intervista has won a trophy in the Media and Entertainment category at the 2024 and 2022 Law Summit, and we congratulate you on this. Is this kind of distinction important for a law firm?

Stéphane S.: One might think that trophies of this kind are only important to flatter lawyers' egos. In reality, I think these awards represent not only all the work we invest in the media and broadcasting sector, but also the technical nature of our work and the fact that we are involved in a large number of transactions in the sector in question. Moreover, this is not only recognition for the partners who were present to collect the award, but also for all the teams and all the members of the firm. Ultimately, despite some initial misgivings, we were all very proud to be awarded this accolade. Even if some people say that an award is useless, those who have one are still very happy to have it.

DC: You are also Secretary General of Paris Business Up. What is this network in particular?

Stéphane S.: Paris Business Up is both a network of expertise and a business development network for its members, who come from diverse and often complementary sectors. The network enables them to compare their realities, their expertise and their experience, and to effectively develop their respective revenue. I'm not involved in other networks because it takes up a lot of my time.

DC: To come back to what links us today, you have trusted us for your Data Room needs for a very long time and we thank you for your confidence. Why did you choose DealCockpit over other tools you have used before?

Stéphane S.: We chose DealCockpit for several reasons. The ease of access, for the simple reason that it is very easy to call someone at DealCockpit to ask basic, simple questions about opening the data room or how to access and organise it. The time it takes to set everything up, which is very quick, and the fact that the tool is extremely easy to use, even for people who aren't necessarily very used to an electronic data room.

For example, I had a retired customer a few years ago who took great pleasure in populating the data room themselves, precisely because they found it extremely fast, smooth and efficient (well, his engineering background probably had something to do with it).

Then there is the fact that it is a French platform where the data is protected, and we know that it is not going to end up in the United States or elsewhere for purposes that we don't know about or cannot control. And finally, there's the pleasure of working with you, which shouldn't be overlooked either.

DC: Do you have any suggestions for DealCockpit to make your user experience more enjoyable?

Stéphane S.: At this stage, no. I find the tool extremely simple and easy to use. The only question I would have to ask is: how is it that DealCockpit is not better known and more widely used by the entire M&A community? For me, that's the real issue.

On a more serious note, the developments that we have discussed off the record and that we cannot yet reveal here, fully meet the needs of our current and, I hope, future cases.

DC: Thank you very much for your feedback. We'll keep you posted. In view of the evolution of corporate law and company needs, do you have any advice for lawyers or other parties reading this on how business has evolved in recent years?

Stéphane S.: I'm going to sound like an antiquity, but I remember the first data room I visited in 1999, before the year 2000 and before the Bug. At the time, you had to physically go to the target, ask for the documents and, above all, obtain them, which wasn't always easy. Then we had to transcribe everything (often they wouldn't let us make photocopies) and write a report, trying not to forget anything that was relevant to note while we were on site. All this was sometimes for due diligences on very large groups.

With digitalisation, the world has changed, and everything has become extremely simple and easy. The advantage of using your tool is that we can set up a data room very quickly, and close it just as quickly, meaning that DealCockpit is completely adapted to the speed of today's transactions, both ours and our clients'. So, keep up the good work.

DC: A slightly provocative question on the subject of digitalisation. Do you consider artificial intelligence to be a threat to the legal profession?

Stéphane S.: Perhaps it is because I haven't tried the paid version of ChatGPT, but so far, the more technical questions I have asked of AIs, including specialist AIs on some legal platforms, haven't given me much cause for concern. I'm not saying that in four- or five-years’ time we won't have to seriously consider this, but at the moment I haven't yet found an AI that is capable of replacing an intern or an associate, let alone me. AI does not yet respond correctly to a simple legal question. And obviously, it does not yet take the intricacies of the human factor into account, which, over and above the technical aspects, is indispensable to the success of a negotiation.

Perhaps soon we will have AI that will directly provide us with the legal solution, or even recommend the ideal solution for managing this particular dispute or making this or that acquisition, and in the latter case draft all the documents for us.

At that point, yes, we will start worrying, but we're not there yet. On the contrary, I think that AI will help us to do our job even better and faster than we do it today.

DC: Intervista seems to be very up to date. In your opinion, are digitalisation and technological advances well incorporated into the firm's strategy?

Stéphane S.: Absolutely, even though there naturally is room for improvement. And it must be said that the use of DealCockpit helps us a great deal in this respect.