Category: Estonia

The Estonian office of TGS Baltic — the firm until recently operating as Tark Grunte Sutkiene — has represented Kemotex Finance in its successful application for creditor and mortgage creditor authorization from the country’s Financial Supervision Authority.

Pursuant to an act passed by the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) on February 18, 2015, creditors and credit intermediaries are subject to supervision by Estonia’s Financial Supervision Authority, which issued a creditor and mortgage creditor authorization to Kemotex Finance on April 3, 2017.

On May 8, 2017 the former Tark Grunte Sutkiene announced that it was rebranding as TGS Baltic, following its 2016 merger with Varul in Estonia. 

Cobalt has advised venture capital firms Karma Ventures and Creathor Venture on a EUR 1.5 million investment in Swedish high-tech startup Adaptive Simulations.

According to Cobalt, Adaptive Simulations offers a cloud-based service that provides customers “with fully automated flow simulations.” According to Cobalt, “this eliminates sub-optimizations due to human error, increases accuracy, and lowers the cost of simulations [by] around 70%.”

The firm’s clients were advised by Partner Kristel Raidla-Talur and Associates Greete-Kristiine Kuru and Sille Rastas. The Swedish law firm Delphi was engaged on Swedish law aspects of the transaction.

Cobalt Estonia has advised Laurus S.a.r.l., a joint venture of the Swiss investment company Partners Group and Northern Horizon Capital, on the sale of the Hobujaama 4 office building in Tallinn to Colonna.

According to Cobalt, “Hobujaama 4 is a centrally located office building next to Viru Shopping Centre, Post Office Centre, and Coca-Cola Plaza with a gross area of 7,000 square meters. Key tenants include Nordea Bank, Viking Line, Kredex, and NG Invest.”

The Cobalt team was led by Partner Aivar Taro and Associate Kris Tammistu.

Cobalt did not reply to our inquiry about counsel for Colonna on the deal.

Lawyers from the Nove and Sorainen law firms have successfully represented private individual Tarmo Tamm before the Estonian Supreme Court in a dispute involving the liability of a board member.

According to a Nove press release, “the dispute centered around the issue of the rights and opportunities of a shareholder in a private or public limited company being acquired (and thus deemed to be dissolved) upon merger of companies, in particular if the shareholder disagrees about the proposed size of shareholding in the acquiring company (the share exchange ratio).” According to Nove, “the complexity and fundamental significance of the matter is confirmed by the fact that the case was heard by the full panel of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court. As a result, the Supreme Court set aside the rulings of lower courts and gave in itself the final judgment on the matter.”

The Nove team was led by Partner Veikko Puolakainen.

The Sorainen team was led by Partner Carri Gintner.

Ellex Raidla has advised Ramboll Finland Oy on divestment of its shareholding in Ramboll Environment OU to Eurofins Scientific, made as part of a global transaction between the two companies involving the sale of Ramboll Finland’s food and environment testing business.  

According to Ellex Raidla, “Ramboll has built a clear market leadership in Finland throughout its 100-year history, offering the widest range of analytical services for environment testing. Its laboratories serve industrial companies, public municipalities as well as consulting companies. The company employs 109 staff across four laboratories in the southern region around Helsinki, as well as at a satellite laboratory in Tallinn, Estonia.”

Lone Clowes, Regional Director at Ramboll Environment & Health, noted that: “While Ramboll Analytics has a strong foothold on the Finnish market, it is a very specialized service requiring dedicated development and investment strategies. We believe that the analytics business will have the best development opportunities in a company that is fully focused on the laboratory sector.”

The Ellex Raidla team was led by Partner Sven Papp, supported by Senior Associate Gerda Liik.

Ellex Raidla did not reply to our inquiry about counsel for the buyers.

Njord’s Estonian office has advised AS Testfilm on the acquisition of a business line focusing on the cure of sleeping disorders and the provision of different specialized medical services from Unimed Grupp OU. Rask Attorneys-at-Law advised Unimed Grupp on the deal, which is expected to close before May 1, 2017.

Njord describes the Unimed Grupp as “a leading provider of medical services in Estonia,” and reports that “after the sale Unimed Grupp will concentrate on provision of dental and orthodontic services and business line that focuses on the cure of sleeping disorders and provision of different specialized medical services will be operated by Testfilm’s subsidiary Pea-ja Kaelakirurgia OU.” According to Njord, “Testfilm’s acquired clinic of sleeping disorders is currently the only clinic in the Nordic Region that offers full medical service in the field of sleeping medicine. The clinic is in cooperation with specialists and scientists from Bordeaux and Stanford Universities on daily basis.”

The Njord team consisted of Partners Veikko Toomere, Anne Veerpalu, and Triinu Hiob, and Associates Raimo Klesment and Siiri Traat-McClelland.

Rask did not reply to an inquiry on the matter.

Ellex Raidla has advised Eesti Gaas on an agreement with the Tallink Group by which Eesti Gaas will provide the Megastar vessel operating between Tallinn and Helsinki with liquified natural gas.

According to Ellex Raidla, Megastar — which began operating in January 2017 — “will become the fastest cruise ship of Tallink, with a total length of 212 meters and taking on board up to 2800 passengers.” The firm claims that although the vessel can also use regular fuel, “compared to regular vessels the ecological footprint of the vessel will be decreased notably by using liquified natural gas.”

Both Tallink Group and Eesti Gaas are owned by Infortar.

Eesti Gaas was advised by Ellex Raidla Counsel Triin Frosch.

Ellex Raidla did not reply to our inquiry about counsel for the Tallink Group.

Njord’s Estonian office has assisted People Fitness Eesti OU with the opening of its first health club in Tallinn.

The sports club, located in Tallinn’s Mustika Mall, belongs to the People Fitness health clubs chain, also present in Riga and Vilnius. According to Njord, the 1600 square meter club “is equipped with modern fitness inventory,” and “it has a spacious cardio area, weight area and the most modern spinning hall with velosimulators.”

The Njord team consisted of Partners Veikko Toomere and Katrin Sarap and Associate Jelizaveta Rastorgujeva.

Cobalt has advised venture capital firm Karma Ventures on its investment in Plumbr.

According to Cobalt, “Plumbr software makes digital user experiences transparent by monitoring interactions that users perform with customer software. It also exposes root causes of performance and availability issues that trigger poor user experience.” With its investment, Karma Ventures being the first institutional investor in the company.

Karma Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm, specialized in seed and A round investments in Europe’s promising tech startups. Its key investors include Ambient Sound Investments and the Baltic Innovation Fund, a fund-of-fund initiative launched by the European Investment Fund in close cooperation with the governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

“Plumbr has so far invested in product development and initial go-to market steps,” said Priit Potter, CEO of Plumbr. “The feedback we get from the market gives us confidence to start scaling sales. Raising additional funding and bringing in extra commercialization power enables us to step up our expansion efforts.”

Kristjan Laanemaa, a partner at Karma Ventures, commented that: “We decided to back Plumbr after recognizing the potential of building a new-era application performance monitoring solution company. We think that the future is not only in monitoring the technical performance of digital services, but also in exposing the business impact of performance and availability issues. This gives businesses the chance to detect and eliminate problems that could otherwise have a significant impact on business results.”

Karma Ventures was advised by Cobalt Partner Kristel Raidla-Talur and Associate Greete-Kristiine Kuru on all transactional matters, as well as Specialist Counsel Ave Piik and Associate Aleksander Tsuiman on IP matters.

Cobalt did not reply to our inquiry about the identity of counsel for Plumbr.

Tark Grunte Sutkiene has represented Kemotex Finance in obtaining creditor and mortgage creditor authorization from the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority.

According to Tark Grunte Sutkiene, creditors and credit intermediaries are subject to the FSA’s supervision pursuant to the act passed by the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) on February 18, 2015. The Financial Supervision Authority issued a creditor and mortgage creditor authorization to Kemotex Finance on April 3, 2017.

The Tark Grunte Sutkiene team was led by Partner Marko Kairjak and Associates Nikita Divissenko and Elina Varendi.