SIMONE PETSCHE-DEMMEL

Background

Having been a litigator from the beginning of her career, Simone has more than 20 years of experience in dispute resolution. Her focus especially lies on complex white-collar crime matters and cross-border commercial litigation. After being a partner with the dispute resolution team of Wolf Theiss, Austria’s largest law firm, for more than 10 years, Simone co-founded petsche pollak. Simone is admitted to practice law as an attorney in Austria (2002) and the Czech Republic (2003). Simone is fluent in both German and English. In 2022, Simone was ranked by Austria’s business magazin Trend among the Top 10 Lawyers for Litigation and Arbitration and in 2023 among the Top 10 Lawyers for White-Collar Crime. Since 2020, she has been ranked by Legal 500 „Leading Individual“ in the field of White-Collar Crime.

Areas of expertise

Simone represents corporates and board members in complex investigation proceedings conducted by the Public Prosecutors Office. She defends them, inter alia against the allegation of business fraud, money laundering, collusive pricing or financial misstatement/balance fraud. Her expertise also covers the corporate criminal law aspects of ESG compliance, especially with regard to greenwashing, sustainability fraud and environmental criminal law. She also represents clients in national or cross-border commercial law disputes, ranging from engineering and construction disputes to product liability and damage or tort claim proceedings. A further area of Simone‘s expertise are Post-M&A disputes.

Lectures, speeches and publications

Simone regularly holds lectures and seminars on white collar crime and business law related topics, for example at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce or the leading Austrian institutions of further education like the Academy for Law, Tax and Economy (ARS – Akademie für Recht, Steuern & Wirtschaft), MANZ and Business Circle. She also gives lectures at the University of Liechtenstein.

Simone is (co-)author of various publications, inter alia the Commentary on the Austrian Sales Agent Act, Handbook Business Contracts and various articles on most recent developments of Austrian and European Corporate Criminal Law. Alongside Andreas Pollak, she is (co-)author of the petsche pollak business crime report, a yearly report that reflects the perceptions of Austrian decision-makers regarding how business crime and the prosecution practices of Austrian authorities impact Austria as a business location.