Mario Leissner

Mario Leissner is Managing Partner and founder of King & Spalding’s German office in Frankfurt am Main, a partner in the firm’s Real Estate Practice Group, and a member of King & Spalding’s International Strategy Committee.  With over 15 years of experience, Mr. Leissner specializes in international and German real estate transactions, regulatory and investment law as well as fund structuring.  His practice also involves international taxation, corporate and financing work.

In the 2011 and 2012 editions of Chambers Europe, Mr. Leissner was recognized as a leader in the fields of investment law and real estate law.

Mr. Leissner represents:

• major investment management companies, open-ended and closed-ended real estate investment funds, asset managers and institutional real estate investors in their legal, regulatory and tax structuring and in all aspects of their worldwide acquisitions, financings and sales;
  
  
• non-German/non-European investors in their inbound investments in German/European real estate.

After the first years of his legal career in another law firm, Mr. Leissner served as General Counsel, Head of Legal and Tax, and Speaker of the Senior Executives, of the market-leading German institutional real estate investment fund sponsor, Sal. Oppenheim Immobilien-Kapitalanlagegesellschaft mbH (OIK), for seven years.  His responsibilities included structuring all activities of the company and the funds worldwide, providing legal and tax advice with respect to the entire operational business of the company and the funds including all real estate and corporate transactions worldwide on the basis of the German and foreign regulatory law as well as handling the legal relationship between the company and its fund investors as well as the supervisory authorities.

Mr. Leissner has conducted more than one thousand transactions worldwide with an aggregate value in excess of US$ 45 billion.

Publications / Lecturer Engagements

• Co-Author “Rechtshandbuch Immobilien-Investitionen” (C.H. Beck)
  
  
• Co-Author “Business Laws of Germany” (West/Thomson Reuters)
  
  
• Co-Author and Strategic Partner “Deutscher AnwaltSpiegel” (F.A.Z.-Institut)
  
  
• Lecturer for Management Circle AG
  
  
• Lecturer for Euroforum Deutschland GmbH
  
  
• Lecturer for Chambers of Commerce and Chambers of Trade
  
  
• Frequently speaks to industry groups on regulatory, fund and real estate law as well as on transaction matters

Memberships

• Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer (German Bar Association)
  
  
• Rechtsanwaltskammer Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt Bar Association)
  
  
• Deutscher Anwaltverein (German Lawyers’ Association)
  
  
• Examination Board for Tax Consultants at the Ministry of Finance of the State of Hessen