Christian Kessel is a partner in the Frankfurt/Main office specializing on commercial contracts, major projects and corporate transactions. He is a leading expert in the automotive industry and has particular experience for offshore work (in particular wind and interconnectors). He is head of Bird & Bird’s International Automotive Group.

Christian is widely experienced in advising international and domestic companies on a large variety of commercial and corporate matters. His areas of practice comprise drafting of, reviewing, advising on and negotiating complex commercial contracts, EPC project contracts, standard agreements required by clients for use in both B2B and B2C settings and advising on any relevant warranty and liability issues. In particular he focuses on the automotive supply, (renewable) energy and telecommunications industries. Christian also advises on all aspects of distribution law and is experienced in insolvency law. In addition, he is involved in corporate law, specifically reorganisations and restructurings of groups of companies or parts thereof and joint ventures.

Christian is a member of several networks and organizations; he is, inter alia, a stakeholder on the EU Commission’s network of experts on the Common Frame of Reference (“CFR-net“), a project by the Commission for the harmonisation of European civil law (possibly as a predecessor to a European Civil Code). He is a member of the Federal Trade Association for Wind Energy in Germany (Bundesverband WindEnergie e. V.) and currently actively engaged in the Initiative to Reform the German Law on Standard Terms and Conditions (”AGB”).

Christian is a regular speaker at Conferences and often gives (inhouse and external) workshops and seminars on topics related to legal issues in the automotive supply industry, on offshore windfarms and relating to interconnectors and standard terms. He is the author of several articles on commercial and distribution law published in books and legal magazines in Germany and England.

In the automotive supply industry Christian acts for suppliers only, from small national to German and non-German internationally operation groups of supplies.

Christian has been involved in some of the most high profile and high-volume offshore transactions that have taken place in Germany in the last few years.

Admitted to the Berlin Bar in 1991 and to the Frankfurt/Main Bar in 1996, Christian has also been a solicitor in England and Wales since 1993 and practised in London from 1991 to 1996. He studied at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the University of London, Kings’ College, where he gained a Master of Law degree. From the Freie Universität Berlin he gained his doctorate degree in 1994.