Navigating global restructurings – three key considerations for multinational employers

October 2026 | SPOTLIGHT | BANKRUPTCY & RESTRUCTURING

Financier Worldwide Magazine

October 2026 Issue

Employers with a multijurisdictional footprint face unique challenges when it comes to balancing business objectives with complex – and sometimes conflicting – international and local laws. This is especially true when undertaking global workforce restructurings, which require companies to think not only about who will be impacted during the reorganisation, but when, where and how to implement such a programme under a variety of local customs and legal requirements. This article highlights three significant questions for global employers to consider when conducting workforce reorganisations.

Which laws apply?

To evaluate legal risks and implement a compliant workforce reorganisation or restructuring, the first question a global employer must answer is which jurisdictions’ laws will govern each individual employee. This can be especially tricky where an employee has touchpoints in multiple jurisdictions, because more than one jurisdiction’s laws may apply to an individual employee depending on the matter at issue. While an employee’s assigned work location may seem like the most obvious answer (and is typically the primary driver when determining applicable law), because global mobility has never been easier, this is just one of several factors that must be considered.

Other factors to consider include, but are not limited to, the employee’s citizenship and immigration status, which may provide the employee with additional protections if they are working in a different country (for example, US citizens who are employed outside of the US by a US employer or a foreign company controlled by a US employer are protected under several federal US anti-discrimination laws even though they work abroad), the employee’s job responsibilities, which may require the employee to travel and perform work in countries beyond their assigned work location (the frequency and duration of this travel may implicate these countries’ laws as well), and the employing entity and payroll to which the employee is assigned, which, although not absolutely determinative of applicable law, may be used to support or undermine an employer’s argument as to what jurisdictions’ laws apply. For example, if the employing entity is a UK organisation, but the employee works in the US, US anti-discrimination laws will apply to the employee even though the work is being performed for a foreign employer.

Moreover, determining an employee’s ‘work location’ can be complicated by remote or temporary work assignments. As such, it is vital that employers have reliable policies and processes in place to accurately capture and track where and when their employees are working, with requirements for employees to report relevant updates to their residency, address and work locations.

How might these laws differ in the restructuring context?

Global reorganisations involve complex design, employee selection and separation decisions. The legal landscape governing how and why employers may make these decisions can vary significantly across jurisdictions, especially with respect to notice or consultation rules.

For example, in Europe, employees often have individual and collective redundancy rights which, while varied based on the specific jurisdiction at issue, generally entitle the employee (or their representatives) to certain information, processes or statutory payments. In the case of a restructuring, collective consultation rights are especially important, because, when triggered, they generally require employers to consult with appropriate representatives, including trade unions and employee works councils, early on in the restructuring process before employment decisions are made regarding a variety of topics, including: (i) the reasons for the proposed decisions or dismissals; (ii) the numbers, descriptions or totals of proposed dismissals; (iii) proposed selection methods and methods for carrying out dismissals, redundancy and severance pay calculations; and (iv) ways to avoid dismissals or reduce the number of dismissals and mitigating consequences. Depending on the specific jurisdiction, this process can be lengthy – ranging from a number of days to months – and carry significant liabilities, both civil and criminal. Collective consultation generally concludes after the representatives issue an opinion on the company’s proposed plan, which may or may not be binding. Only once this occurs is the company permitted to act and implement its restructuring. Moreover, if the restructuring involves selling a business unit or transferring activities between group entities, additional consultation obligations may arise under Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations or the Acquired Rights Doctrine. Importantly, it is very common for management and executive employees in Europe to be represented by trade unions or employee works councils, so employers should not dismiss their potential collective consultation obligations for senior employees based on their job status alone.

By contrast, in the US, the at-will employment doctrine generally permits employers to implement termination decisions without any prescribed advanced notice or processes. Exceptions to the doctrine may apply, however, in individual cases, such as where an employee has entered into an employment agreement that outlines termination procedures, or group scenarios, such as where unionised employees are subject to a collective bargaining agreement, or the termination qualifies as a mass layoff or plant closing. In this latter situation, the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) requires employers to provide impacted employees, union representatives and others with advanced notice of the employment loss. State mini-WARN laws may provide for different advanced notice and even severance obligations (as is the case under New Jersey law). Unlike in Europe, management employees in the US are generally excluded from union bargaining units, so while labour laws may not apply, WARN and state mini-WARN laws continue to do so.

In addition to process distinctions, local law can also vary greatly in terms of defining protected characteristics – i.e., the characteristics upon which employment decisions may not be made – and protected workers, such as certain employee groups that have heightened protections. These definitions typically apply to all employment decisions, not just dismissal or separation decisions. As such, it is important that employers be mindful of their limitations throughout the restructuring process, including when drafting job descriptions, identifying selection criteria and making selection decisions.

Finally, once employment selection and separation decisions have been made, jurisdictional legal patchworks will also impact how multinational employers seek to mitigate the risks resulting from these decisions. For example, when preparing separation or settlement agreements, the applicable law will dictate, among other things, whether a waiver of claims may be sought and if so, the scope thereof, including the substantive types of claims included therein, whether the waiver applies to future claims or is limited to only those claims that may have accrued as of the execution date, and which releasees are covered by the waiver (including whether more than one corporate entity can be named therein). With respect to this latter issue, to avoid blurring corporate structures or lines, for employees with touchpoints in multiple jurisdictions, it may be more advisable to enter into separate separation or settlement agreements with each of the relevant corporate entities; however, doing so will require the employer to ensure that it has independent consideration to support the individual agreements. Another important area of distinction is restrictive covenants. While some jurisdictions will recognise and enforce post-employment non-compete or non-solicitation provisions, others limit employers to garden leave clauses, which apply during the active notice period rather than post-employment.

As these examples suggest, jurisdictional differences in the relevant laws impacting corporate restructurings can be significant. As such, it is critical that employers undertake advanced planning to identify the countries potentially implicated by the restructuring and develop flexible compliance programmes for developing, implementing and communicating this work.

For employers with US workforces or operations, does disparate impact still matter?

Whether they are a US-based employer or simply have employees operating in the US, any employer with touchpoints in the US should be aware of the country’s evolving anti-discrimination legal landscape and how these developments may impact legal liability for restructuring decisions.

At a high level, US federal anti-discrimination claims can take a variety of forms, including a disparate treatment claim, in which there is a tangible, intentional employment action at issue, a hostile work environment claim, in which an employee is subject to unwelcome remarks or conduct, a retaliation claim, in which an employer takes adverse action against an employee for engaging in protected activities, and a disparate impact claim, in which a neutral policy or practice has an unintentional and disproportionate impact on members of protected classes.

While disparate treatment claims are always a concern, disparate impact claims are especially relevant in the context of workforce restructurings. As a result, employers have long been advised to conduct adverse impact analyses to better understand their potential exposure to a disparate impact claim and consider mitigating measures in light of the same. However, pursuant to Executive Order 14281, which was signed in April 2025, the federal government has deprioritised enforcement of disparate impact liability. While these actions may suggest that employers no longer need to consider disparate impact legal risks, this is not the case. First, federal anti-discrimination statutes and court precedent regarding the same have not changed. Rather, they continue to recognise and prohibit disparate impact discrimination and provide private parties with the right to pursue these legal theories.

Second, federal law is not the only source of authority. Several state and local laws have long recognised their own disparate impact theories of discrimination. Others, perhaps in response to the changing federal landscape, are working to do the same. Finally, while some federal agencies have rescinded portions of their disparate impact regulations, the portions that remain preserve the expectation that relevant organisations maintain certain demographic data. Indeed, several of these agencies have even noted that eliminating disparate impact liability “does not preclude the use of data on disparate outcomes to help prove intentional discrimination”. This indicates that these agencies will still use statistical analyses to support discrimination claims, even if those are limited to intentional disparate treatment discrimination claims.

Conclusion

Given the complex legal landscapes within which global companies must conduct workforce restructurings, it is critical that employers take the time to develop and implement nimble reorganisation programmes, which may include: (i) mapping out the workforce country-by-country early in the design process, including evaluating which laws are likely to apply to which employees; (ii) engaging local counsel to identify country-specific compliance considerations and help develop jurisdiction-specific workstreams where necessary; (iii) where consultation is required, building a consultation timeline that generally reflects compliance with the slowest relevant jurisdiction’s requirements rather than the fastest, and identifying relevant representative bodies, including trade unions and employee works councils; (iv) training human resources and decision makers in key regional or country-specific compliance considerations; (v) developing a communication plan to ensure messaging is tailored to jurisdiction-specific requirements; and (vi) monitoring legal developments in key jurisdictions, as this remains a dynamic area of the law for many countries.

Lily J. Kurland is an attorney at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. She can be contacted on +1 (202) 508 6106 or by email: lily.kurland@bclplaw.com.

Lily J. Kurland

Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner