Category: Lithuania

Tark Grunte Sutkiene has represented AB City Service, a shareholder of Ecoservice, in a sale of its shares in the company.

Ecoservice is the biggest waste management company in Lithuania, engaged in the collection, transportation and processing of secondary raw materials and household waste. It was acquired by the Baltcap private equity and venture capital fund through UAB AWT Holding. AB City Service has reinvested part of the funds and retains 25% of shares in UAB AWT Holding.

AB City Service is a holding company which manages one of the largest corporate groups engaged in facility management and integrated utility services in Europe. The shares of City Service AB have been quoted on the Official List of NASDAQ OMX Vilnius Stock Exchange since 2007.

The Ecoservice deal was one of the biggest transactions in the utilities sector in recent years and is the first private equity fund investment in the sector in the Baltics. 

Tark Grunte Sutkiene has advised Baltic Champs, a major producer of mushrooms, in structuring and implementing a merger with the Agrowill Group agricultural goods producer.

The total value of the transaction is slightly less than EUR 30 million. After successful closing of the merger, a mandatory tender offer to buy the remaining shares in AB Agrowill Group was launched. TGS describes this as the first mandatory tender offer ever made in Lithuania, during which shares would be purchased on both NASDAQ OMX Vilnius and the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

After the merger, the total sales of the international group are approximately EUR 40 million, and it holds more than 40,000 hectars of agricultural land in Lithuania and Ukraine. The Baltic Champs Group has around 85% of the mushroom market share in Lithuania, and Agrowill is a leading company in agriculture business. In a statement on the firm’s website, TGS announced that “the transaction involved all classical (but novel to Lithuania) features of true merger: exchange of shares listed in stock exchange, launch of takeover bid in 2 stock exchanges in Vilnius and Warsaw and negotiations of shareholders agreement.”

The Lithuanian office of the Fort law firm is representing 262 plaintiffs in a class action against the state-run Deposit and Investment Insurance Company (DIIC).

On behalf of its clients, Fort attorneys are seeking a ruling by the Vilnius district court that funds deposited by the plaintiffs for a non-registered share capital increase of Lithuania’s Snoras Bank — which went into bankruptcy in November, 2011 — should be treated as deposits deserving of protection from the DIIC. The claim amounts to a total of EUR 1.7 million.

According to Andrius Mamontovas, Fort’s Managing Partner in Vilnius, “our clients were put into an awkward situation, where their funds collected for a new emission of shares of Snoras (which was ultimately refused by the Bank of Lithuania) were not returned back to them, nor were the shares issued in exchange of such payments. Therefore, we seek to prove to the court that from the moment the Bank of Lithuania refused to grant permission for the registration of Snoras’ share capital increase, the funds deposited as payment for the shares should be treated as funds in the bank account subject to deposit insurance up to EUR 100,000.”

The Lithuanian office of Sorainen has successfully represented Zalvaris and Baltical in significant tax disputes with the Customs Department valued at a total of almost EUR 290,000.

Zalvaris is a leading Lithuanian waste recycling company. Baltical is Lithuania’s largest secondary aluminum casting company. The Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court ruled in the cases that in order to impose anti-dumping duties, the customs authorities must prove the origin of the goods and that processing operations have been carried out in another country that would serve as a basis for changing the origin of the goods. 

In the particular matters at hand, the Lithuanian customs authorities had not recognized the certificates of origin for the goods provided by Zalvaris and Baltical. The Lithuanian customs authorities stated that the country of origin of the imported goods was the People’s Republic of China and imposed anti-dumping duties, additional charges, penalties, and default interest. The Supreme Administrative Court found that the customs authorities had failed to carry out an independent inspection, and instead relied solely on European Anti-Fraud Office reports. 

In its final judgement, the Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court granted the appeals of both companies and reversed the decisions of courts of lower instance and of the Lithuanian customs authorities that were adverse to the companies. 

Sorainen Partner Kestutis Svirinas, and attorney Jonas Sakalauskas represented Zalvaris and Baltical.

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.