Steven De Schrijver

Astrea is an independent law firm based in Antwerp and Brussels. Established in 2006, the firm has experienced continued growth and advises a growing list of domestic and international clients in all major areas of business law (including corporate/M&A, finance, private equity, employment, commercial, IP, ICT, data protection and privacy, gambling and gaming, real estate, transport & logistics, administrative, environmental, employment, tax, and litigation/arbitration & ADR). Astrea now counts 13 partners and more than 45 highly-experienced lawyers. Working closely with some of the finest law firms around the world, Astrea’s partners advise on complex, cross-border and domestic transactions and legal matters. Astrea’s attorneys are multilingual and combine specific legal expertise with relevant industry knowledge and a pragmatic and solution-oriented approach.

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do"

Steven is a partner at Astrea and specializes in M&A, corporate law, IT and media, data protection and privacy and outsourcing.
Steven has almost 30 years of experience in advising Belgian and foreign companies on corporate transactions and has been involved in numerous national and cross-border transactions in the IT, media, telecoms and life sciences sectors.

Steven also advises some of the largest Belgian and foreign technology companies, as well as innovative entrepreneurs on complex commercial agreements and projects dealing with new technologies, most of the time with a cross-border element.

Steven has been involved in many IT, outsourcing, software and cloud application development, digital transformation, telecom/media projects (establishment of first mobile telephone operator in Belgium, acquisition of Flemish broadband cable operator, joint venture to launch video-on-demand services) and data protection (now: GDPR) compliance projects. He has a passion for artificial intelligence, robotics and drones.

He is also is active in the IBA Corporate and M&A Law Committee and the IBA Technology Law Committee and in ITechLaw. He is past-President of IFCLA and a member of the Tech M&A Committee of ITechLaw. He is Honorary member of AIJA and the Belgian member of EuroITCounsel.

Steven De Schrijver received in 2019 (for the fifth time) the Who’s Who Legal award as Global IT / TMT / Data Lawyer of the Year and is considered a “Global Elite Thought Leader” in Data by Who’s Who Legal (https://whoswholegal.com/steven-de-schrijver). Steven is recommended for corporate & M&A in Chambers, Legal 500 and IFLR and for IT law in Chambers, Legal 500 and Who’s Who Legal.

Steven is known by his clients to go all the way to get the job done. He is pro-active, responsive, extremely available and pragmatic. Steven has an extensive international network of foreign lawyers with whom he closely cooperates on inbound and outbound cross-border transactions.

Recent transactions:

• Assistance of Pixid, the French vendor management system-specialist, with the acquisition of Connecting-Expertise, from the HR-group USG People Belgium.

• Acquisition by NYSE-listed HubSpot of PieSync.

• DoubleVerify on its acquisition of Zentrick.

• Alpina Capital Partners on its acquisition of Objective International.

• Horizon Ventures on investment in Cloudalize.
• LivaNova on Belgian aspects of several global transactions. 

Relevant work IT:

• DPG Media with the launch of streaming platform Streamz and the set-up, in this respect, of their joint-venture with Telenet.

• Radius Payment Solutions with launch of telecom activities in Belgium.

• ISS Facility Services, Mazda Logistics Europe on IT infrastructure and services outsourcing projects.

• Microsoft on its day-to-day commercial matters.
• Skype on criminal case with respect to alleged refusal to supply users data.