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Papapolitis & Papapolitis has acted for Intracom Holdings in the sale of its shareholding participation in Hellas Online, a leading provider of broadband and fixed telephone services, to Vodafone Greece, in the largest transaction in the telecom industry in Greece this year.

In the transaction, Vodafone, which bought an 18.5 percent stake in Hellas Online in 2009, acquired an additional 73 percent stake for EUR 73 million.

The deal gives Hellas Online an equity value of 311 million euros, including debt, Vodafone said. Regulators still have to approve the deal, which is expected to be completed in Q4, 2014.

The combination with Vodafone’s Greek unit will make it the second-largest integrated phone company in Greece by revenue. Hellas Online had about 519,000 customers at the end of last year, representing a market share of around 11 percent, Vodafone said. The Greek company reported EUR 224.2 million in revenue last year.

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Herbst Kinsky has advised institutional investor Constantia Industries and early stage Austrian/US venture fund Initial Factor Speed Invest regarding their 7-digit USD investments in bitmovin, a technology leader in adaptive streaming solutions.

The additional capital is expected to be used by bitmovin “to accelerate development and deployment of its high performance cloud-based encoding platform bitcodin and its efficient bit dash streaming clients for MPEG-DASH.” 

Bitmovin is the global technology leader in online over-the-top streaming client solutions and server encoding systems, enabling best-quality media experience for the user. According to a bitmovin press release, “this is bitmovin’s first investment round, following the founding of the company in 2012 and the commercial release of its bitdash streaming client solutions and of the bitcodin high-performance cloud encoding platform. Using this financial basis, bitmovin will invest in further development and expansion of its product portfolio and accelerate its market entry in Europe and the U.S.”

Speed Invest is an early stage seed fund based in Vienna. With offices in Vienna, Austria and Silicon Valley, it targets seed stage companies out of Central Europe in the Internet and mobile sector.

Constantia Industries is a privately-owned Austrian company with annual sales of about Euro 618 million. The most important markets for its products are the construction and building material industry, the furniture industry, the sporting goods industry, the machinery and generator industry, and the aircraft industry, as well as solar and energy technology.

Herbst Kinsky’s team was led by Partner Philipp Kinsky and Attorney Florian Steinhart.

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ALRUD is advising the global Shire biopharmaceutical company on Russian-law related aspects related to its proposed combination with the US-based AbbVie pharmaceutical giant.

AbbVie intends to acquire Shire for approximately USD 52 billion in order to both diversify its product line-up and reduce its tax burden in US. Shire’s Board of Directors recommended the AbbVie offer on July 18, 2014.

The deal is subject to a certain number of regulatory approvals in various jurisdictions, including approval by the Russian antimonopoly service.

Members of ALRUD’s antitrust practice working on the matter include Senior Partner Vassily Rudomino, Senior Associate German Zakharov, and Attorney Ruslana Karimova.

Slaughter and May is advising Shire on EU law matters and Davis Polk & Wardwell is advising Shire on US law matters.

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SORAINEN has announced that it is representing both KIA Auto and Tallinna Kaubamaja in appealing the Latvian Competition Council’s conclusion that the companies are improperly restricting warranty rules to the Administrative Regional Court of the Republic of Latvia.

The Competition Council’s decision holds the companies jointly and severally liable to pay a fine on the grounds that the warranty procedures introduced by KIA Auto are restricting passenger vehicle repairs and usage of non-original spare parts. “In reality,” a SORAINEN statement asserts, “these warranty procedures are aimed at ensuring passenger vehicle safety and are not used to exclude independent repairers or prevent usage of matching spare parts.” According to the firm, “KIA Auto discontinues cooperation with authorized repairers which attempt to introduce such restrictive practices in any way and constantly reviews its cooperation partners.”

KIA Auto and Tallinna Kaubamaja’s appeal claims that the Competition Council’s decision is not supported by evidence. In an extensive statement on the matter, SORAINEN claims that: “the companies are also opposed to the way the decision has been interpreted and publicised by the Latvian Competition Council as a lengthy and ongoing breach, potentially causing undue and unjustified loss of reputation of KIA Auto and Tallinna Kaubamaja. In fact, KIA Auto and Tallinna Kaubamaja have been fined and held accountable for unilateral actions of one cooperation partner, namely Gros Auto Grupa, which denied warranty repair of KIA Ceed passenger vehicle on the grounds that the technical maintenance of the car had been carried out by Auto Stils Serviss and not by an authorised KIA repairer. KIA Auto strongly emphasized that the whole review of the Competition Council has been based on this one-of case. There is no evidence of other cases where KIA owners or users had been denied warranty repairs. Furthermore, during the investigation KIA Auto provided numerous explanations to the Latvian Competition Council regarding KIA Auto warranty rules, procedures to ensure their correct application and the possibilities to contact KIA Auto as the importer in case any of the authorized repairers denies warranty repairs for any reason. KIA Auto provided also supporting documentation and procedures. The Competition Council ignored the explanations provided about KIA warranty rules and their application in practice. It should be further emphasized that the Competition Council failed to carry out any survey of the owners and users of KIA passenger vehicles to determine of there have been any other cases of unjustified warranty refusals or actual foreclosure of independent repairs market or spare parts market. Finally, applying joint and several liability to Tallinna Kaubamaja as the holding company of KIA Auto is a grave abuse of mother company liability doctrine as normally understood and applied by the competition authorities.”

The Competition Council fined KIA Auto EUR 134,514.43 (EUR 96,150.92 of which is applied jointly and severally with Tallinna Kaubamaja as holding company of KIA Auto). The Council also requires KIA Auto to discontinue the application of allegedly restrictive warranty rules, change the warranty rules until January 1, 2015, and inform the owners of KIA passenger vehicles about the possibilities to carry out technical maintenance and non-warranty repairers at independent repairers. 

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Fellner Wratzfeld & Partner has advised the HANNOVER Finanz private equity company on its acquisition of IS Inkasso Service Group, a company operating in Austria, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

The Linz-based IS Inkasso Service Group is a market leader in receivables management in Austria. The company previously belonged to Swedish company Transcom WorldWide.

Along with TPA Horwath, fwp was in charge of carrying out due diligence, negotiating the share purchase agreements, and obtaining regulatory approval for the merger on behalf of the buyer.

The share purchase agreement for acquiring IS Inkasso Service Group was signed in June, and the closing took place in August following approval by the Austrian competition authorities.

The fwp transaction team was led by Partner Lukas Flener.

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