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Peterka & Partners has announced the appointment of Andrea Butasova and Dmitri Zikratski as Partners.

Butasova will participate in the management of the Bratislava office along with Director Premysl Marek and Jan Makara. Zikratski has been named Director of the firm’s Minsk office, replacing Zdenek Bajar, who managed the office since 2012. Bajar is leaving the firm “to pursue new opportunities.”

Butasova is a Slovakian lawyer with a degree from the Law Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava. She has worked with Peterka & Partners since 2003, though in 2005-2006 she left the firm to work with the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. 

Zikratski joined Peterka & Partners in 2012, after spending two years as a lawyer with the Revera Consulting Group in Minsk. He has also worked with the Business Dialog law firm, and in-house with the NTS holding company and Beltekhexport. He obtained his law degree from Belaruski Dzjarzauny Ekanamieny Universitet in 2001.

In addition, the firm has announced that Partner Monika Simunkova Hoskova has been named the Head of the firm’s Russian desk, where she will manage the support of Czech and Slovak clients in Russian-speaking countries, including Belarus, as well as clients from those countries in the Czech Republic and CEE.

The Esin Attorney Partnership, a member firm of Baker & McKenzie International, and Baker & McKenzie’s Amsterdam office, have advised the shareholders of Mekanist B.V. on the sale of 100% of shares of Mekanist B.V. and Mekanistnet Internet Hizmetleri Ticaret A.S. (Mekanist) to Zomato Ireland Limited. Both Stibbe and Curtis Mallet-Prevost represented Zomato on the deal.

Founded in 2008, Mekanist is a Turkish online social platform providing information on over 190,000 listed establishments including restaurants, cafes, and bars in Turkey, along with over 500,000 reviews from its 1.5 million strong user base. Zomato is an online and mobile restaurant search and discovery service with over 30 million monthly visitors, providing in-depth information for over 300,000 restaurants across 22 countries. Zomato was founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008 and launched in Turkey in November 2013. Oytun Calapover is the Country Manager of Zomato Turkey. After the integration, Zomato will cover over 75,000 restaurants in Turkey, serving users over 3 million times a month.

“Zomato’s acquisition of Mekanist will create one of the most dynamic social media sites and restaurant discovery services in Turkey, targeted to the rapidly growing population of tech-savvy food bloggers and reviewers,” said Esin Attorney Partnership Partner Muhsin Keskin, who led the deal with Amsterdam-based Legal Director Max van Verschuer. Supporting attorneys included Caner Elmas in Istanbul and Koen Bos, Reinout Bautz, and Aad Bos in Amsterdam. 

CMS has appointed Wojciech Koczara as the new head of the firm’s real estate practice in Central and Eastern Europe. Koczara, a Partner at CMS Poland, succeeds Hungary-based Gabor Czike, who led the practice for the past two years.

Koczara has over 15 years’ experience in the real estate sector, and CMS describes him as having “played a key role in developing CMS’ regional real estate practice, advising on some of the major property transactions in the region.” He joined the firm in 2006 from Clifford Chance, where he had spent the previous two and a half years, and which he had joined after spending 2 years at Haarmann Hemmelrath, 1 year at Ernst & Young, and 1 year at Domanski Zakrzewski Palinka. He obtained his law degree in 1998 from the University of Warsaw.

Andrew Kozlowski, CMS Managing Partner for CEE, commented: “CMS continues to stand out as the market leading real estate legal advisor in the region, advising on many of the most significant cross-border and domestic transactions in the logistics, office, retail, hotel and leisure sectors. We are indebted to Gabor for his thoughtful leadership and role in building the excellent market position we enjoy today.” Czike remains with the firm, and CMS reports that he “will continue to play a key role in the development of the regional real estate practice going forward.”

Vegas Lex has won an appeal for the Zlatmash (Zlatoust Machine Building Plant) plant in the Urals in an unjust enrichment case. The case was heard and decided (on January 21, 2015) in Russia’s Eighteenth Commercial Court of Appeals.

The Zlatmash plant is affiliated with Russia’s Federal Space Agency, and is one of the leading manufacturers of strategic missile systems for the Russian Navy. It is also the largest government contractor in the Chelyabinsk Region. Its products include components for the Sineva submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The company also manufactures civilian products.

In 2010, Zlatmash had changed its power supplier to cut production costs, and began buying energy from the independent company Arstem Energotreid instead of its former default supplier, Chelyabenergosbyt. However, for several years the plant did not sign an official supply agreement with the independent energy company. The local grid company, IDGC of Urals, filed a RUB 140 million claim (approximately EUR 1.8 million, as of January 28, 2015) against Zlatmash, arguing that a grid company is entitled to collect the energy consumer’s unjust enrichment that resulted from contract-free and unaccountable power consumption.

The case was considered by the Chelyabinsk region Commercial Court, which fully rejected the grid company’s claim. The ensuing appeal in the Eighteenth Commercial Court of Appeals was won by Vegas Lex lawyers, who proved that the grid company’s claim was not legitimate. The court of appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling.

The ruling in favor of Zlatmash was facilitated by the Vegas Lex team, led by Managing Partner Alexander Sitnikov and Head of the Energy Projects Practice Evgeniy Rodin.

On January 1, 2015, Peter Knight took over as Managing Partner of the Bird & Bird Hungary office from Richard Eordogh, who left the firm.

As a result, the formal name of the office has changed accordingly, from Eordogh Bird & Bird Iroda to Knight Bird & Bird Iroda.

Eordogh originally joined Bird & Bird in May, 2011, as a Partner and Head of Corporate/M&A, Hungary. He became the Managing Partner of the office in January, 2012. Previously he had worked as the Chief Legal Counsel for Chayton Capital LLP in London and as a Partner in the Budapest office of Eversheds.

Peter Knight, who replaces him, is a Partner in the firm’s International Dispute Resolution Group. 

Neither Eordogh or the firm commented following CEE Legal Matters’ inquiries about the change.

Aequo successfully persuaded the Superior Commercial Court of Ukraine to grant the cassation appeal of the Reverta asset management company — Aequo’s client — in a case involving the title to a mortgage for commercial premises located in downtown Kyiv.

According to a statement released by the firm, “due to the complexity of the case the Superior Commercial Court of Ukraine considered Reverta JSC’s cassation appeal [with a] panel of 7 judges. After 10 hours court hearing the Superior Commercial Court of Ukraine granted Reverta JSC’s cassation appeal substantiating the legitimate claims of the company, and upheld the first instance court judgment recognizing Reverta JSC’s title to the premises as of 26 December 2013.

Members of Aequo’s Dispute Resolution team working on the case included Counsel Pavlo Byelousov, Attorneys-at-law Yevgen Levitskyi Myroslava Savchuk, and Associate Yuriy Stepanov, all under the supervision of Partner Oleksandr Mamunya.

Teva Pharmaceuticals Hungary has hired the former Legal Director in Hungary of Sanofi-Aventis, Judit Miskolci, as its new Legal Director responsible for Hungary.

As previously reported, Teva Pharmaceuticals’ previous General Counsel for Hungary was Eszter Torok, who left the company in April, 2014,  after 10 years. Gabor Antal — originally seconded from Kinstellar in May — was responsible for the company’s legal matters in the country on an interim basis. On October 1, he left Kinstellar and moved to a European role within Teva as the company’s Associate General Counsel, Europe, with pan-European with respect to “certain work-streams and projects.”

Miskolci joined Sanofi-Aventis as its country Deputy Legal Director in February 2007 and was appointed Legal Director in February 2011. She has substantial experience with Teva Pharmaceuticals in her background as well, however, as she worked for the company as external counsel for many years before joining Sanofi-Aventis.

CHSH Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati has advised OMV Aktiengesellschaft, the leading energy group in the European growth belt, on the increase of the company’s stake in Petrol Ofisi, from 41.58% to 95.75%. The transaction was closed on December 22, 2010 with the acquisition of the 54.14% stake held by Dogan Holding.

The now-OMV Petrol Ofisi is the second largest private company in Turkey, and Turkey’s leading fuel products distribution and lubricants company with the strongest distribution network consisting of approximately 2,200 filling stations, 1 lubricants plant, 11 fuel terminals, 3 LPG terminals, 19 aviation units, and approximately 1.2 million square meters of storage capacity.

The CHSH team was led by Partner Clemens Hasenauer, who said: “This transaction is one of the largest deals performed by an Austrian company in recent years and it clearly shows that things are looking up for the M&A sector.” Besides Hasenauer, the CHSH team consisted of Johannes Prinz, Bernhard Kofler-Senoner, and Lorenz Pracht.

At OMV, Stefan Waldner, Head of M&A, and Andreas Aigner, Head of M&A Legal, were in charge of the transaction.

Image source: Tupungato / Shutterstock.com

Vitaly Kachelya, the former Managing Partner of the Glimstedt Belarus office, has left the firm. The new head of the office is Darya Zhuk.

A graduate of Belaruski Dziarzhauny Universitet, Kachelya originally joined the Baltic firm in November 2008. His experience includes advising on privatizations, mergers and acquisitions, real estate projects, investment projects, debt and equity financing, project finance, and private equity.

Zhuk previously worked for BelJurBureau and JurExpress in Belarus, and joined Glimstedt a month after Kachelya (in December 2008).

Neither Zhuk or Kachelya were available for comment.