merger

Which translation, when

Why

Merger lives in two German registers and only one of them drafts documents. The transaction word is the Verschmelzung of the Umwandlungsgesetz, by absorption or by new formation, § 2 UmwG, built on a Verschmelzungsvertrag, § 4 UmwG, notarised under § 6 UmwG, and completed by registration, at which point § 20 UmwG performs the trick English reorganisations assemble by hand, universal succession, the whole estate including liabilities passes in one stroke, no individual assignments, no consent hunting beyond what the contracts themselves say about control changes, and the transferring entity is extinguished without liquidation. Fusion meanwhile is the word of merger control and the press, legitimate there, the EU regulation itself runs under Fusionskontrollverordnung while the GWB speaks of Zusammenschluss, but as the name of the corporate act it reads like journalism. And the merger clause of Anglo-American boilerplate belongs to neither register, it is the Vollständigkeitsklausel, a sentence about the document, not about the companies.

Typical mistakes

• Fusionsvertrag reads like journalism, the transaction document is der Verschmelzungsvertrag, § 4 UmwG, notarised under § 6 UmwG.
• The merger clause of the final articles is not a Verschmelzung, it is the Vollständigkeitsklausel, and a translation that smells corporate restructuring in the boilerplate has misread the register.
• Universal succession is the working surprise, § 20 UmwG moves assets and liabilities in one stroke on registration, no individual assignments, so transplanting English asset-transfer mechanics into a German merger drafts machinery the statute already runs.

What matters

Cross-border reorganisation memos test the word twice: the step plan says the subsidiaries will merge, in German documents die Gesellschaften werden verschmolzen, §§ 2 ff. UmwG, with the Verschmelzungsvertrag notarised, § 6 UmwG, and the estate crossing by universal succession on registration, § 20 UmwG. The Fusion version survives the press release and fails at the notary, and the merger clause in the SPA’s boilerplate never belonged to this world at all.

Examples