About Anne Granger Anne Granger is a member of the Paris Bar and a partner with the FLV & Associés firm in France. She is a graduate of the Panthéon-Sorbonne University law school and has extensive expertise in business law, in particular distribution, competition, consumer and EU law. She uses her wealth of experience in distribution and competition law to assist clients, mainly suppliers, in connection with the implementation of their product distribution strategies and the settingup of distribution networks. She also handles antitrust matters (cartels and restrictive practices, including private enforcement actions). FLV & Associés FLV & Associés is a Paris-based business law firm that advises small and mediumsized businesses, as well as large public companies, in all areas of business law, and represents its clients in connection with judicial and arbitral litigations. The partners of the firm aim to develop longterm relationships with clients, providing them with personalised services performed by a team of qualified, seasoned and responsive lawyers. The firm is comprised of general commercial lawyers, each of whom also relies on certain specialized areas of expertise. Contact Anne Granger Partner, FLV & Associés 10 Av. de Messine, 75008 Paris, France Tel: +33(0)1 58 36 20 00 | E: a.granger@flv-associes.com www.flvassocies.com generally expect that retailers conduct fair negotiations as part of a long-term commercial relationship in order to reach an agreement which will both add value to their products and increase their turnover with the retailer. Do you have any predictions for how these will affect the broader business landscape in France? Because of the growing complexity of applicable law to commercial negotiations in connection with agricultural and food products, one can expect the negotiations to gradually shift from such types of products to non-food consumer products, which are also facing increasing costs and the inflation of industrial raw material but are not subject to such a complex regulation. That being said, more generally, it is undeniable that commercial negotiations are becoming more and more technical, with an exponential increase of legal constraints. The complexity of the legal framework as well as the lengthy negotiation process could eventually invite parties to enter into two-year or three-year contracts with automatic price revision or indexation clauses. In such cases, the choice of the price index will be all the more important. In any event, it is important for any supplier to properly draft its general sales conditions in order to have a complete negotiation basis covering all the usual aspects of the negotiation, particularly logistics. These general conditions must indeed be drafted strategically as a key document for negotiation to deal in particular with logistics and the countless financial sanctions created by retailers. THOUGHT LEADER 67
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