Legal services for foreign companies in Sweden
We advise companies headquartered outside Sweden on Swedish law. Some clients need a single question answered before a board decision. Others need a Swedish legal workstream run end to end. Both are normal.
Below is what we do. If your question does not fit neatly into one of these, it is still worth asking, the answer is often shorter than you expect.
Market Entry and Establishment in Sweden
The first decision is structural: a Swedish subsidiary (aktiebolag), a branch (filial), or selling into Sweden without a local entity. Each has different consequences for liability, tax, employment and reporting, and the right answer depends on what you intend to do here over the next few years — not just at launch.
We advise on the choice of structure and the obligations each one triggers: minimum share capital, board and management residency requirements, registration with Bolagsverket, tax and employer registration with Skatteverket, beneficial ownership registration, and the appointment of a person to receive service of process where your management sits outside the EEA.
Where the work is administrative rather than advisory, we hand execution to Corporate Service Sweden, which handles formation and registration on a fixed fee.
Typical engagements: entry structuring advice ahead of a board decision · subsidiary or branch establishment · restructuring an existing Swedish presence · winding down a Swedish entity.
Cross-Border Transactions
We act on Swedish-law aspects of international transactions: acquisitions of Swedish targets, investments into Swedish companies, joint ventures with Swedish partners, and group reorganisations with a Swedish leg.
Our clients are usually either a foreign buyer or investor who needs Swedish counsel alongside their lead adviser, or a private equity or credit fund with a Swedish angle on a wider deal. We run legal due diligence on Swedish targets, draft and negotiate the Swedish transaction documents, and flag the local points — employment transfer, real property, permits, works council consultation — that a foreign lead counsel will not have on their checklist.
We also handle the confidentiality and pre-deal stage: NDAs, exclusivity, heads of terms, and the information-barrier arrangements funds require.
Typical engagements: buy-side legal due diligence · SPA and shareholders' agreement negotiation · Swedish counsel to a foreign lead adviser · NDA review at scale.
Swedish Employment Law for Foreign Employers
Employing people in Sweden is where foreign companies most often get an unwelcome surprise. Employment protection under LAS is substantive and largely non-waivable. Collective bargaining agreements can apply to you through union relationships or industry practice, not only by signature. Termination requires objective grounds and a defined process, and getting the process wrong is expensive independently of the merits.
We advise on hiring your first Swedish employee, drafting compliant employment and executive contracts, the consequences of signing or avoiding a collective agreement, posted workers and secondments from your home entity, contractor-versus-employee classification, and terminations and reorganisations including the negotiation obligation with unions.
We are counsel, not a payroll provider. Where you need ongoing payroll and HR administration we will refer you to a provider we work with and stay involved on the legal side.
Typical engagements: first-hire setup · reviewing an employer-of-record arrangement · collective agreement exposure assessment · termination and settlement · reorganisation.
Commercial Contracts Under Swedish Law
We draft, review and negotiate the commercial agreements that carry your Swedish business: distribution and agency agreements, supply and manufacturing contracts, SaaS and technology agreements, partnership and reseller arrangements, and terms of sale for the Swedish market.
For foreign clients the recurring question is whether your existing template survives contact with Swedish law. Often it substantially does, and the work is a targeted adaptation rather than a rewrite — Swedish mandatory rules on agency termination compensation, limitation of liability, and consumer protection being the usual points of contact.
Typical engagements: adapting a group contract template for Sweden · distribution or agency agreement negotiation · reviewing Swedish counterparty terms · dispute avoidance on live contracts.
Statutory Representation in Sweden
Several areas of Swedish and EU law require a company to appoint someone established locally to act on its behalf. These are separate legal roles with separate obligations, and companies frequently discover them one at a time.
Process agent (särskild delgivningsmottagare) — required where a Swedish company's authorised representatives are all resident outside Sweden. The appointed person receives service of process on the company's behalf.
GDPR Article 27 representative — required for controllers and processors outside the EU that offer goods or services to, or monitor, people in the EU.
Packaging EPR authorised representative — required under Regulation (EU) 2025/40 (PPWR) for producers placing packaging on the Swedish market without being established here. This role is delivered through PPWR Sweden.
The common thread is that you are appointing a legal person to stand in your place before Swedish authorities. We take that seriously, which is why these services sit with a legal adviser rather than a mailbox provider.
Typical engagements: appointment as process agent for a Swedish subsidiary · GDPR Article 27 representation · PPWR authorised representative · reviewing whether an existing arrangement is adequate.
Corporate Governance and Ongoing Compliance
A Swedish company has continuing obligations that do not stop after formation, and foreign parents frequently under-resource this until something is late.
We advise on board composition and the EEA residency requirements for directors and managing directors, board and shareholder decision-making, the annual general meeting, changes to articles of association, share issues and capital changes, and directors' liability. We also handle the corporate housekeeping — minutes, registrations with Bolagsverket, beneficial ownership filings — where a client prefers to keep that with counsel rather than with an administrator.
Typical engagements: governance review of an existing Swedish subsidiary · board and management appointments · extraordinary general meetings and capital changes · directors' duties advice.
Regulatory and Sector Advisory
We advise on Swedish regulatory questions arising from market entry and operations, with particular depth in life sciences and medical devices — reflecting a dual legal and biomedical background — and in digital assets and emerging technology regulation.
Typical engagements: regulatory scoping ahead of market entry · product and marketing compliance review · assessing whether an activity is licensable in Sweden.
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How we work
Most matters are quoted on a fixed fee or against a capped estimate agreed before we start. Recurring services are priced annually. We will tell you at the outset if a matter would be better handled by someone else.
