Advisory Services

Our Advisory Services deliver better results in specific negotiations.

We help clients develop sophisticated approaches in high-stakes deals such as divesting or acquiring businesses, restructuring relationships, and resolving disputes.

We’ve advised on large sales, entering and exiting joint ventures or alliances, divestitures, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing agreements, procurement, negotiations with large department store and discount store chains, settlements of shareholder class action, IP and other lawsuits, IP licensing, and a variety of commercial and financial negotiations. We have also worked with governments on financial and diplomatic negotiations.

Solid Results:

Our work with clients has produced large sales they believe they would not otherwise have made and brought to our clients’ bottom lines hundreds of millions of dollars beyond their optimistic assessments in negotiations to sell divisions or extricate themselves from complex relationships. We have helped them start and grow effective partnering relationships, settle litigation, restructure supply chain arrangements, negotiate agreements with countries, and been involved in a wide variety of other situations.

What Clients Say About Our Advisory Work:

“David Lax and his team at Lax Sebenius worked behind the scenes to help us take on an extraordinarily challenging negotiation that threatened the viability of our company. They brought to bear a strategic sense and sage advice, helping to lead our team through a process in which we and Lax Sebenius collaboratively developed and executed a negotiation strategy. The 3D Negotiation approach helped us identify and activate external parties – including some that were not initially obvious to us – that usefully influenced our negotiating counterparts. David and his team worked as a sounding board for us before and after key points in the process, offering tactical advice and helping us to adjust our strategy as needed.

As a result of the negotiating strategy we developed in close collaboration with David and the Lax Sebenius team, the share price of TransAlta jumped 25% on the day that the agreement was announced; beyond our relief at getting this brutal negotiation behind us, jointly working through the systematic 3D negotiation process strengthened our management team’s capabilities.”

“Lax Sebenius have provided extraordinary value to Bupa and Diageo. They have worked with my teams on a wide range of corporate and commercial negotiations for almost 20 years. Rather than play the game that presents itself, they proactively set up a negotiation game that has a higher probability of achieving a successful outcome. In doing so, they have developed creative, thoughtful and sometimes out-of-the box strategies that have saved/created Diageo and Bupa over £300 MM in value while a) often improving relationships with external parties; b) improving our own internal negotiations; and c) building the teams’ capabilities to perform better.”

"Their 3D approach was important in helping to deliver hundreds of millions of pounds of value for shareholders."

"Following the clear and innovative concept of '3-D Negotiation' has contributed invaluably to many agreements that are critical to Novartis."

“For many years, we searched for just the right firm and individual to find the best approach to enhance our senior executives’ negotiating skills and after endless presentations of tired win-win and win-lose clichés, we began working closely with Dr. Jim Sebenius. His 3-D approach is in use at many levels of the Estee Lauder Companies with excellent results.”

“I asked William Ury and David Lax to help me in the most contentious and difficult business negotiation of my career – the sale of my final stake in the company I grew from a small firm to the largest food company and largest employer in Brasil. The two years prior to their engagement were filled with public sparring, litigation, and unproductive negotiation. They helped me think carefully about my own interests, worked to create leverage with respect to the buyer and developed a plan to meet the fundamental interests of both buyer and seller. They negotiated on my behalf with their chosen intermediary, the distinguished Baron David de Rothschild, and achieved an agreement that met my interests so well that it surpassed my expectations at the time I engaged them of what might be achievable in the negotiation.”