CEE Legal Matters

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  • Freshfields Advises Kering on Purchase of Ulysse Nardin

    Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised the Kering luxury brand group on the acquisition of all shares in the Swiss Ulysse Nardin watch manufacturer.

    Listed on the Euronext Paris Euro, luxury and lifestyle company Kering (formerly PPR) operates with brands like Gucci, Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney, Brioni, Puma. The company generated a turnover of EUR 9.7 billion with 35,000 employees in 2013. With the acquisition of Ulysse Nardin, Kering strengthens its Luxury Watches and Jewelry division. The transaction must still be approved by the relevant competition authorities and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2014.

    Freshfields accompanied Kering on all aspects of the transaction outside of Switzerland, where the company was advised by the Homburger law firm. The Freshfields team — which included lawyers from the firm’s Moscow and Vienna offices — consisted of Heiner Braun, Maximilian Platzer, Xianbei Li, Sebastian Pritzkow, Stephan Purps, Jennifer Ju, Nathalie Di Thomasso, Maria Borodina, Pavel Annekov, Alexandra Basheva, Massimo Caruso, Silvestro Nasturzio, Richard Bird, Andrew Wood, Allen Yan, Mohammad Tbaishat, Axel Reid Linger, and Alex Viktorov.

     

  • Wolf Theiss Advises on Acquisition of Viennese Millennium Tower and Millennium City

    Wolf Theiss has advised Aareal Bank on its financing of what the firm is calling the “biggest real estate deal in Austria in 2014”: The purchase by the Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund and the Linz-based Kaufmann group of the Viennese Millennium Tower and Millennium City.

    The acquisition remains subject to the approval of the competition authorities. 

    The 202-meter Millennium Tower was until recently the tallest office building in Austria. The 47,200 square-meter Millennium City complex contains a shopping mall, flats, and a cinema. Munchmeyer Petersen Capital acquired the real estate in 2003 for EUR 360 million, with financing provided by Westdeutsche Immo Bank. 

    The Wolf Theiss team was led by Partner Andreas Schmid, assisted by Michaela Zakharian, Rainer Kammerhofer, and Georg Harer. Counsel Karl Binder was responsible for real-estate aspects.  

     

  • Hogan Lovells’ Dubovsky Joins Weinhold

    Weinhold Legal has announced the addition of Miroslav Dubovsky, the former Managing Partner of Hogan Lovells in Prague.

       

    Miroslav Dubovsky

    Dubovsky has spent more than 20 years of his professional career working with international law firms in Prague, including 2 years as a partner with Linklaters before joining Hogan Lovells in 2001. His practice focuses primarily on mergers and acquisitions including private equity and property law. He is also a highly-regarded international commercial arbitration lawyer, and regularly sits as an arbitrator. His move follows the announcement of Hogan Lovells office to close down its Prague operations effective July 1 (initially reported on by CEE Legal Matters of May 14, 2014)

    In a Weinhold Legal press release, Dubovsky stated: “I am thrilled by the prospect of joining a market leading Czech law firm where I believe I can contribute to its further growth.” And Weinhold Legal Managing Partner Daniel Weinhold said: “We are delighted to have Miroslav join our team. His excellent skills, experience and market reputation further enhance our credentials as one of the leading law firms in the Czech market.”

     

  • Integrites Successfully Challenges Tax Notice for Phillip Morris Ukraine

    Integrites has successfully defended the interests of Philip Morris Ukraine in a dispute against the Specialized State Tax Inspection for Work.

    The dispute involved Philip Morris Ukraine’s challenge to a tax notice, increasing the amount of excise tax payable to UAH 42.9 million (approximately EUR 2.65 million). That notice, Integrites reports, was issued based on findings obtained from an unscheduled field tax inspection. After hearing Integrites’ arguments, the Kharkiv Administrative Court of Appeal fully canceled the decision of the tax authority and recognized the claims of Philip Morris Ukraine. 

    Integrites lawyers working on the case included Vyacheslav Korchev, Integrites Senior Partner, Counsel Denys Kytsenko, and firm lawyers Oleg Radutny and Telman Martyrosyan.

    This is the second time this year the firm has successfully represented Philip Morris before Ukrainian tax authorities (see CEE Legal Matters on February 14, 2014). 

  • Baker & McKenzie Advises EIB on EUR 55 Million Loan to Ukrainian Railways

    Baker & McKenzie has acted as Ukrainian law counsel to the European Investment Bank (EIB) in connection with its EUR 55 million loan to the State Administration of Railway Transport of Ukraine, and the related sovereign guarantee.

    According to the firm, the loan will finance the construction of a new 1.8 km twin-track railway tunnel in Ukraine to improve transport connections between Ukraine and the European Union. Under the project, the new tunnel, located in the Carpathian Mountains at Beskyd in southwest Ukraine, will replace the existing single-track tunnel, which is the only single track section of the twin-track electrified line between Lviv and the Hungarian and Slovak borders. The new tunnel will add significant transport capacity on this international rail corridor and make it possible to cope with expected future demand.

    Baker & McKenzie’s team on the matter was led by Kiev Partner Serhiy Chorny, supported by Associates Victoria Ischenko and Hanna Shtepa.

     

  • Lakatos, Koves and Partners Advises Prologis on Acquisition of Logistics Facility in Budapest

    Lakatos, Koves and Partners has advised Prologis on the acquisition of Prologis Park Budapest-Ullo, the 37,500 square meter Auchan-occupied building in Budapest.

    The “high-quality logistics facility,” which  is located in the vicinity of the Budapest Airport and the Budapest ring road M0, 30 kilometers from the Budapest city center, is — according to a firm press release — “100 per cent leased.”

    LKP Partner Attila Ungar, head of the firm’s Real Estate Practice, believes the deal as an encouraging sign. “Hungary is over the crisis in the Real Estate market, Ungar said. “Expectations are rising and transactions are happening. Deals like this mark a change from the crisis management that we have seen in recent years.”

    An LKP press release states that, “the deal was made by Prologis European Properties Fund II, established in August 2007, which is one of four European co-investment vehicles managed by Prologis. As of March 31, 2014, the Fund owned 253 properties, for a total of 5.9 million square meters with a net market value of EUR 3.595 million. Prologis owns and manages approximately 3.7 million square meters of logistics and distribution space in Central & Eastern Europe.”

  • Former Yukos Shareholders Awarded Damages From Russian Tax Authorities

    Following shortly after the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ordered that the Russian government pay USD 50 billion in damages to former Yukos shareholders (reported on by CEE Legal Matters on July 28, 2014), the European Court of Human Rights has now awarded the shareholders an additional EUR 1.86 billion in damages in a lawsuit filed against the Russian tax authorities.

       

    (pca-cpa.org)

    The court’s ruling was published on July 31, 2014. The damages award is the ECHR’s biggest to date. Moscow also has to pay an additional EUR 300,000 in legal costs to the Yukos International Foundation, a Netherlands-based company that houses some of Yukos’s remaining assets.

    At the same time, the court rejected the Yukos shareholders’ claim that the unfair tax proceedings led to the company’s liquidation in 2007, ruling that “there was insufficient proof of a causal link between the violation found and the pecuniary damage allegedly sustained by Yukos.” 

    In a statement, Russia’s justice ministry noted that it “does not view this ruling as an example of a fair and unbiased approach to the legal and factual circumstances of the case.”

    In 2004-2005, the Moscow Commercial Court collected over RUB 300 billion from Yukos in tax arrears for 2000-2004, while dismissing a lawsuit filed by Yukos to invalidate the results of an auction to sell Yuganskneftegaz, an oil producing asset of Yukos, and to award it RUB 388.3 billion rubles in damages. Yukos shareholders filed suit in 2004, claiming that the Russian tax authorities had unlawfully confiscated their property in violation of the articles of European Convention on Human Rights, and demanding USD 98 billion in damages. 

     

  • Sayenko Kharenko Represents Ukrainian Ammonium Nitrate Producers

    Sayenko Kharenko’s has successfully represented the Azot, Rovnoazot, Severodonetsk Union Azot, and Concern Stirol nitrogen fertilizer producers in a sunset review and interim review of anti-dumping measures applied to ammonium nitrate imported into Ukraine from the Russian Federation.

    A Sayenko Kharenko press release explains that the firm’s “international trade team successfully represented Ukrainian producers of nitrogen fertilizers in the course of the whole proceeding starting from drafting the requests for the review initiation; registration of the interested parties; answering the questionnaires for the national producers and additional questionnaires; drafting commentaries to the answers to questionnaires submitted by foreign producers including requesting construction of normal value based on the fair market price of natural gas; participating in the hearings and drafting post-hearings submission, commenting the report on preliminary results of the interim review and the sunset review, etc.”

    Sayenko Kharenko’s team was led by Counsel Nataliya Mykolska, head of the firm’s international trade practice group, and included Associates Anzhela Makhinova and Tetyana Makukha.

    Igor Golchenko, Ostchem’s Head of Legal, explained that, “this is my first experience in protecting the interests of national producers in the domestic market over the last 18 years of international anti-dumping practice. I am glad that this experience has been successful thanks to Sayenko Kharenko’s team and personally to Nataliya Mykolska. I am delighted with the fact that some Ukrainian law firms are already experienced enough to play in the ‘major league’ of this specific practice area.”

     

  • Squire Patton Boggs Advises on IPO of Chinese Children’s Footwear Manufacturer

    Squire Patton Boggs lawyers from China, Hong Kong, Germany, and Poland have advised Feike, the German holding of a leading manufacturer of children’s footwear and apparel in China, on its listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The public offering was conducted in Germany and Poland. 

    The Feike group sells its products of leather and canvas shoes, sandals, and sneakers in China under three brands, ‘Feike’, ‘Atongmu’ and, for both children’s clothing and shoes, ‘Lanmao.’ Each brand targets different age groups, from young children to teenagers, and is positioned in different price segments. 

    The Squire Patton Boggs team was led by Partner Benjamin Kroymann in the firm’s Shanghai office, and included Furong Ren and Leon Xu in Shanghai, Francis Li and Dennis Chan in Hong Kong, Kai Mertens and Navid Anderson in Berlin, Andreas Fillmann and Thomas Busching in Frankfurt, and Marcin Wnukowski, Pawel Magierowski, and Dominika Kupisz in Warsaw. 

    “We’re pleased to have acted for Feike AG on this important step in its ongoing business growth,” commented Benjamin Kroymann. “There continues to be a steady stream of Chinese businesses looking to raise capital abroad. Their expansion strategies reflect the changing consumer demands and a rapidly growing consumer market which we have seen emerge in the Chinese economy over the past few years.”

     

  • DZP Client PLL LOT Obtains Approval of Restructuring Plan by European Commission

    Domanski Zakrzewski Palinka has announced that on July 29 the European Commission gave final approval to PLL LOT’s Restructuring Plan, thereby concluding that state aid granted to the company was compliant with EU law. This decision ends formal proceedings against the Polish carrier. 

    DZP’s Infrastructure and Energy Practice advised PLL LOT in proceedings for obtaining approval of the Plan from the European Commission. In May 2013 the European Commission approved state aid of PLN 400 million for the airline, finding that aid aimed at rescuing undertakings in economic difficulties was in line with the EU rules. 

    According to a DZP press release, Tuesday’s decision will enable the carrier to continue the Plan until October 2015.

    The DZP team advising PLL LOT included Partner Marcin Krakowiak, Senior Associates Anna Glapa and Agata Kudelska, and Irena Filipowicz.