CEE Legal Matters

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  • Clifford Chance Badea Adds New Counsel to Bucharest Office

    Romanian Corporate/Commercial lawyer Loredana Ralea has joined the Bucharest office of Clifford Chance as Counsel.

    After spending the first three years of her career in-house, Ralea worked with Taylor Wessing for almost four years, then with CMS Cameron McKenna — first as a Senior Associate and then as a Partner — for 12 years.  She spent the last half year with Gide Loyrette Nouel, before moving over to Clifford Chance.

    “In recent years, we had the chance of meeting Loredana on the other side of the negotiation table,” Clifford Chance Partner Nadia Badea said. “We have always respected her professionalism and expertise, and we are now happy to welcome her to the Clifford Chance Badea team. It is, without a doubt, a valuable addition to our law firm, with an experience that will further consolidate the team, and a strong personality, constantly focused on pursuing the clients’ needs and interests.”

    “Throughout the projects we have worked on together, the lawyers at Clifford Chance Badea proved to be interesting and challenging partners,” Ralea said. “Amid an ever-competing market, performance and professional rigor become essential selection criteria not only for business purposes, but for recruiting activities as well, for both sides. I am honored that my profile fits the Partners’ strategy and I am deeply motivated to confirm their expectations and reach the defined targets.”

     

  • Clifford Chance Advises Palero Invest on Vattenfall Europe PowerConsult Acquisition

    Clifford Chance has advised Palero Invest, Luxembourg, on its acquisition of Vattenfall Europe PowerConsult from the Swedish Vattenfall AB energy group.

    The closing of the transaction is subject to customary conditions.

    Headquartered in Vetschau/Brandenburg (Germany) and employing a staff of around 535 employees, the VPC Group is a specialized service provider for engineering and laboratory services in the power plant and energy sector. The subsidiaries of VPC Group, Vattenfall Europe PowerConsult East d.o.o. in Belgrade, and Lausitzer Analytik GmbH Laboratorium für Umwelt und Brennstoffe in Spremberg (Germany), were also part of the transaction.

    Vattenfall is one of Europe’s largest generators of electricity and producers of heat. The Group has approximately 32,000 employees. The parent company, Vattenfall AB, is 100%-owned by the Swedish state.

    The Clifford Chance team was led by Partner Christine Koziczinski and included Senior Corporate Associates Hendrik Rohricht and Stefan Bruder, Tax Partner Thorsten Sauerhering and Senior Associate Dominik Engl, and Real Estate Partner Horst Schlemminger.

     

  • Boyanov Advises Sofica in Acquisition by TeleTech

    Boyanov & Co. has advised Sofica Group AD, Bulgaria’s biggest business process outsourcing company, in relation to its acquisition by TeleTech Holdings Inc.

    Sofica has a staff of 800 and provides customer services in over 15 languages. The company also operates in Skopje through its subsidiary Sofica Macedonia.

     

  • Gide Advises on Polish Shopping Center Refinancing

    Gide Loyrette Nouel has acted for Unibail-Rodamco on a EUR 200 million refinancing of the Galeria Mokotow Shopping Centre in Warsaw.  

    The firm classified the deal as “one of the most significant real estate financing projects on the Polish retail market.” The new credit facility was extended by Berlin Hyp AG and Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen.

    Galeria Mokotow, which opened in 2000, is the second largest shopping centre in Poland, with a total retail area of 62,500 square meters.

    Unibail-Rodamco was advised by Gide Partner Hugues Moreau, and Associates Mateusz Gronau & Pawel Jaskiewicz.

     

  • Asters Promotes Lawyers to Partner and Counsel

    Asters has announced that Counsel Svitlana Chepurna and Senior Associates Yevgen Kravtsov, Yevgen Porada, Andriy Pozhidayev, and Kostyantyn Solyar have all been promoted to Partner at the firm.  

    In addition, Senior Associates Gabriel Aslanyan and Oleksiy Demyanenko have been promoted to Counsel. The promotions are effective as of February 28, 2014, and bring the firm’s total up to 14 Partners and 6 Counsels.

    Asters’ Managing Partner Oleksiy Didkovskiy released a statement regarding the promotions: “Asters’ continued commitment to retaining and promoting its best human asset is evident in this 2014 promotion class. The promoted lawyers represent Asters’ quality, breadth, and depth and demonstrate our ongoing investment in business and the firm’s strategic course on incentivizing younger legal talent. This course led recently to a number of other decisions directed at a more efficient partnership organization. We congratulate all newly promoted lawyers and wish them every success in the future.”

    Partner Armen Khachaturyan added: “These promotions are based on high merits of the new partners and counsels who went a long way from the firm’s start-ups to professional maturity. We look forward to having them continuing provision of excellent legal service to the firm’s clients, developing its business, enhancing strategy and effective solutions. As a result the firm got an exemplary professional leadership matching Asters’ leading position in the market.”

     

  • LAWIN Partnership Grows in Lithuania

    The Lithuanian office of LAWIN has announced that Professor Vytautas Mizaras, the Head of the Private Law Department of the Faculty of Law at Vilnius University, will be joining the firm as Partner.

    Mizaras will head LAWIN’s sub-group for intellectual property, media and privacy. Mizaras explained that his main areas of practice at the firm “will be intellectual property and innovations, advertising and product marketing, media, entertainment law, protection against unfair competition, and protection of individual privacy. As my most immediate goals and challenges, I would name the ensuring the firm’s competitiveness in the aforementioned spheres in other countries and litigation dealing not only with issues that are important for individual clients, but also with conceptual issues having particular legal and social significance.”

    The firm also announced that Egidijus Baranauskas, who has been the Head of the firm’s Commercial Disputes Team since joining the firm in 2012, will become a Partner. Before that, Baranauskas was a judge in the Civil Division of the Supreme Court of Lithuania, and before that a named partner at Baranauskas, Sinkevicius and Partners, for more than 10 years. He lectures at the Faculty of Law of Mykolas Romeris University and makes regular presentations at various conferences on transactions, contract law, law on security of obligations, disputes, arbitration, and other topics.

     

  • The Full Picture: First issue of CEE LM

    The premiere issue of the CEE Legal Matters magazine is available now and subscribers can find the electronic version here. Lawyers working in CEE will find it chock-full of useful information in the form of news, analysis, opinions, expertise, best-practices, perspective, and humor.

    Subscribers who have received the magazine already are enjoying the following features:

    * Market Spotlight: In-depth analysis of the Turkish legal market, along with a special guest editorial, interviews with Turkish General Counsel, and more

    * Experts Review: Analysis of Intellectual Property developments across CEE, written by leading experts in IP from each market

    * Special articles on the effect of the protests in Ukraine on M&A in the country, on two American law firms launching expanded CEE practices, and more

    * Top Sites: A review and analysis of law firm websites across CEE

    * Across the Wire: A full summary of all transactions, hires, and promotions reported on the CEE Legal Matters website in the past two months

    * A special introduction by Ron Given, Partner at Wolf Theiss

    And much, much more

    Although it’s only been on the streets for a few days, the feedback has already been overwhelming. Don’t miss out. Subscribe today.   

  • Integrites Successfully Represents Galika AG in Dispute with Ukrainian Authorities

    Integrites has successfully represented Galika AG, the world’s largest exporter of metalworking equipment, in litigation against Ukrainian state authorities.

    Galika AG, a Swiss company supplying high-tech equipment for metalworking as well as providing technical and engineering consulting, disputed special sanctions that the Ukrainian Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and the Ukrainian State Tax Service (STS) had imposed on it. The Integrites team, led by Senior Lawyer Alexei Kominartsy, working under the direction of Dispute Resolution Partner Denys Kytsenko, succeeded in having the sanctions withdrawn, allowing the company to resume its export-import operations in Ukraine.

     

  • Integrites to Assist Elf Attract Commercial Financing

    Integrites has announced that it has agreed to help the Elf group attract commercial financing.  

    Elf is one of the largest manufacturers of cosmetics and household products in Ukraine. Integrites announced that its lawyers will offer “comprehensive legal support” to Elf, including post-export financing and structuring the transaction in coordination with international export credit agencies. Integrites will also provide an analysis of the legal framework, as well as an assessment of potential risks and their hedging instruments in attracting trade finance products for delivery to Ukraine. The Integrites team will be led by Senior Partner Vyacheslav Korchev.

     

  • Svitlana Musienko Elected to Board of the International Fiscal Association

    Svitlana Musienko, Partner and Head of Tax at DLA Piper in Ukraine, has been re-elected to the board of the International Fiscal Association in Ukraine (IFA) for the third time. 

    Board members are elected by members of the association and will hold their positions until 2015.

    Working on a voluntary basis for the IFA, the board is expected to contribute to a constructive dialogue between international business representatives and the Ukrainian tax and judicial authorities, and to work to establish the further implementation of international standards in Ukraine’s tax field (including OECD Commentary, Transfer Pricing Guidelines, concepts developed by ECJ and tax courts in other jurisdictions). 

    To further these ends, the board members of the IFA will conduct seminars and meetings with the Ministry of Revenues and Duties, draft new legislative acts, and represent the IFA at an international level.

    Transfer pricing rules, the beneficial ownership concept introduced by the Tax Code of Ukraine, and a permanent establishment of tax status are all expected to be hot topics this year, according to Musienko, who also expects the reduction of discriminatory provisions towards non-residents in the Tax Code of Ukraine to be a frequent focus.

    Musienko will be joined on the IFA board for 2014-2015 by Svetlana Bilyk (PricewaterhouseCoopers), Irina Marushko (Lavrynovich & Partners), and Ruslan Vakhitov (Baker Tilly). Alexander Buryak (PricewaterhouseCoopers) became the Treasurer of the Association, and Elena Voznyuk (OMP Law Offices) became its President.