AI Issue 5 2018

Acquisition International - Issue 5 2018 63 Drawing on over 60 years’ experience in the legal market, Studio Legale Sutti (SLS) is an innovative, IP and competition law focused law firm headquartered in Milan with offices around the world. We profile the firm to find out how it came to be named Leading Intellectual Property Litigator – Italy in last year’s renowned Global Excellence Awards. ounded in 1953 by Dr. Angelo Sutti, Knight of the Italian Republic, SLS is an Italian law firm with a strong focus on company commercial law and intellectual property and competition law offering its services to local businesses and entrepreneurs. In the late seventies the Firm began an uninterrupted growth cycle, making it eventually one of the ten largest Italian firms, according to a number of independent sources. As part of this growth, SLS established a Labour & Related Matters Department with its own premises, staffed by lawyers who had already collaborated with the firm in this area for a number of years. Thus, the firm was dramatically profiting also from an early investment in state-of-the-art IT infrastructures, and morphing into a structure based on firm-wide departments, which is still in place. In the mid-Eighties, SLS’s practice, while retaining most of its original features, including its emphasis on human resources and teamwork, its commitment to excellence in dispute resolution and its loyalty to a substantial core of domestic clientele, became increasingly involved in the international arena, and began interviewing foreign candidates in its recruitment operations. This also led the firm to establish, in 1992, its two first representation offices abroad, namely in London and Tokyo, offering the firm’s services to the local markets; and to participate actively to the life of a number of foreign chambers of commerce and trade associations in Italy. The domestic operation of SLS, which had already included two regional offices serving Northern Italy, respectively situated in the area of Bergamo and Brescia (originally in Trescore Balneario) and in the area of Pavia and the southern Milanese province (in Abbiategrasso), was significantly reinforced in 1993, when the Firm merged with Monti & Partners another well-known Milan-based law firm active since 1927 in international investments and trade matters, as well as banking and financial law, and moved its Head Office to the current prestigious premises in Milan, via Montenapoleone 8. Seeking Success in Italian Law F 1802AI66 The merged firm kept the name Studio Legale Sutti, while Marco Monti, formerly Senior Partner of Monti & Partners, became the new Senior Partner after the premature death of Angelo Sutti. Guido Monti, who founded Monti & Partners and had been its Senior Partner until 1975, remained Of Counsel to Studio Legale Sutti until the age of ninety-eight and 2002, as the dean of Milan Bar and one of the oldest practising lawyer in Italy. New Italian offices were established in the same period, respectively in Rome; Monza; and Genoa, where SLS was honoured to be joined by the partners and associates of Studio Pennisi. In the meantime, SLS had become both an interdisciplinary and international firm, having welcomed patent attorneys and tax advisors (“commercialisti“) to its ranks and established the single largest practice of South-Eastern Europe (in terms of human resources, territorial coverage and turnover). In particular, further to mergers with local leading players, the firm started operating its own offices in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Romania, Croatia, increasingly representing a point of reference with respect to investment and trade involving that part of the world. Ultimately, this international presence and dedication to excellence remains SLS’s ongoing focus as the firm looks towards a bright and prosperous future. Company: Studio Legale Sutti Contact: Ada Cattaneo Address: SLS SRL, Via Montenapoleone 8, Milan, 20121, Italy Phone: 0039 02 762041