Category: Uncategorized

The Gur Law Firm in Istanbul has announced that IP and Dispute Resolution lawyer Ahmet Akguloglu was promoted to Partner on January 1, 2015.

Akguloglu is a graduate of the Istanbul University, Faculty of Law, and has been with Gur for the past seven years. He has experience in all aspects of intellectual property matters including prosecution, litigation, enforcement, dispute resolution, unfair competition, client counseling and strategy in a range of legal actions in Turkey and overseas. Gur reports that Akgloglu “has carried out numerous complex litigation proceedings related to intellectual property law, especially in trademark, design and patent infringement, domain name disputes and unfair competition matters. He also provides services in the fields of commercial law, competition law, and anti-dumping.” 

He acts as a panelist before the National Arbitration Forum in domain name disputes and he is a member of the Anti-Counterfeiting Committee of the International Trademark Association. He is also a member of AIPPI, ECTA, Marques, and the IBA.

BWW Law & Tax has advised the Griffin Group in relation to the acquisition of property located at Miedziana St. in Warsaw, from Zaklady Graficzne “Dom Slowa Polskiego.”

The property — part of the “Towarowa” project — includes more than 15 thousand square meters along with several buildings. The acquisition of that property constitutes the last element of the “Towarowa” project realized by Griffin Real Estate, which now controls the total area of 6.2 hectares within the central district of Warsaw. 

The BWW Law & Tax team was managed by Partner Marek Wojnar, who was supported by attorney Katarzyna Marzec and lawyer Michal Soltyszewski.

This follows the acquisition of the same group of the Green Horizon office complex in Lodz from Skanska Property Poland (reported on by CEE Legal Matters on December 30, 2014).

Image source: ataner.pl

Estonian business and transaction lawyer Piret Jesse has been admitted to the Partnership of Tark Grunte Sutkiene.

Jesse has 15 years of experience in business law, M&A, and business transaction structuring and negotiations. She has also long term experience advising real estate and construction companies. She is a member of several committees of the Estonian Bar Association, including the business law committee, and has lectured on business law at the University of Tartu for years.

“It is our aim to ensure the best expertise and quality for our clients,” said Managing Partner Aare Tark. “Therefore, we deem it important that only the best experts in their area are partners in our firm. Piret is an excellent transaction lawyer and negotiator with long-term experience who will find a solution even for the most complicated problem. Taking this into account, her promotion to the partnership is a natural step in order to strengthen our business and transaction advice and real estate and construction law practices,” 

In a statement released by the firm, Jesse described her ethos: “For achieving its business aims, each company needs a trustworthy partner in managing the company and in negotiations and concluding day-to-day and also more complicated transactions. My motto is that it is better to prevent disputes than to resolve them.”

Gleiss Lutz has advised E.ON SE, Dusseldorf, on the sale of its Italian coal and gas generation assets to the Czech energy company Energeticky a Prumyslovy Holding (EPH), which was represented by Baker & McKenzie.

EPH is a vertically integrated energy group based in Prague owning and operating predominantly regulated and contracted energy assets in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, and Poland. The activities which will be sold have a total generation capacity of approximately 4,500 megawatts. They consist of an approximately 600 megawatt coal-fired power plant in Sardinia (Fiume Santo) and approximately 3,900 megawatts of gas-fired power capacity across six power plants located on the Italian mainland and in Sicily.     

The transaction is subject to the approval of the European Union competition authority and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2015.     

The Gleiss Lutz team working for E.ON consisted of Partners Thomas Menke, Martin Hitzer, and Alexander Schwarz, as well as lawyers Marc Seeger, Maike Krewet, and Beate Kirchner. The Baker & McKenzie team in Italy advising EPH was led by Partner Gianluca Benedetti.

The acquisition follows the November, 2014 acquisition by EPH of Eggborough Power Limited, which marked the group’s entry into the UK market. 

Image source: 360b / Shutterstock.com

Sorainen has announced that it advised the MG Valda real estate company on the sale of its shares in BCU2 — the company owning the North Star business center in Lithuania — to the Prosperus Real Estate Fund I (originally reported on by CEE Legal Matters on December 23, 2014).  

The Sorainen team advising MG Valda — part of MG Baltic, one of the largest groups in Lithuania, engaged in the retail and wholesale, logistics, manufacturing, media, real estate development and management, construction and telecommunications industries — was led by Partner Ausra Mudenaite and Senior Associate Giedre Frolenkiene.

Avellum Partners has acted as Ukrainian legal counsel to Deutsche Bank AG, London Branch and ING Bank N.V., London Branch, acting as Dealer Managers, in connection with the exchange offer of Metinvest B.V.

The offer relates to Metinvest’s USD 500 million 10.25% guaranteed notes due 2015, coupled with the new issue of USD 289.7 million 10.5% guaranteed notes due 2017 (“Notes”) under its USD 1,500,000,000 Guaranteed Medium Term Note Programme and a 25% cash consideration.  The Bank of New York Mellon, London Branch acted as the Exchange Agent.  The Notes are listed and admitted to trading on the Global Exchange Market of the Irish Stock Exchange.  

Metinvest is a vertically-integrated group of steel and mining companies that manages every link of the value chain, from mining and processing iron ore and coal to making and selling semi-finished and finished steel products. Metinvest comprises steel and mining production facilities located in Ukraine, Europe, and the US, as well as a sales network covering all key global markets. 

The Avellum Partners team was led by Partner Glib Bondar with significant input of Associates Artem Shyrkozhukhov, Taras Dmukhovskyy, Anna Melnychuk, and Olena Polyakova.

Clifford Chance and the Yegin Cifti Attorney Partnership — the firm’s Istanbul arm — have advised the joint lead managers on the third international Rule 144A/Reg S sukuk issuance by the Republic of Turkey: USD 1 billion lease certificates due 2024 (what Clifford Chance refers to as “the Republic Sukuk”).

The Republic Sukuk is listed on the Irish Stock Exchange. It uses an ijara structure, which relies on a statutory framework allowing for asset-leasing certificates to be issued by a special-purpose company called an “asset-leasing company.”

The deal, which represented the third-largest sukuk issuance from Turkey following the debut sovereign sukuk in 2012 and 2013, was nearly three-and-a-half times oversubscribed, with a total order book of USD 3.4 billion. 

The Clifford Chance team was led by Partner Debashis Dey, who was supported by Dubai Associates Brian O’Leary and Eileen Kerr. Support on the US securities aspects of the transaction was provided by Partners Robert Trefny and Christopher Walton, with assistance from Associate Catherine Martinez. 

Islamic structuring advice was provided by Partner Qudeer Latif, supported by Dubai Associate Shauaib Mirza. Yegin Ciftci Attorney Partnership provided local Turkish law advice on the transaction through a team led by Partner Mete Yegin and Counsel Mufit Arapoglu, supported by Associate Sait Eryilmaz.

Herbst Kinsky has advised Haplogen on the sale of Haplogen Genomics to the Horizon Discovery Group, which was represented by Wolf Theiss. The transaction had a total value of EUR 7.7 million in cash and Horizon shares, plus earn-out up to approximately EUR 5 million.

Haplogen is a Vienna-based biopharmaceutical company. According to Herbst Kinsky, “employing a proprietary genetics technology to identify host factors, Haplogen is building a pipeline of therapeutic programs in the area of virus-caused diseases.”

Horizon Discovery Group is a revenue-generating life science company headquartered in Cambridge, UK and listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company supplies research tools to organizations engaged in genomics research and development of personalized medicines. Horizon has a customer base of over 1,000 organizations across nearly 50 countries, including major pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostic companies as well as leading academic research centers.

The Herbst Kinsky team was led by Partner Phillip Dubsky. Other members of the team included Associates Alina Regal and Tanja Lang. The Wolf Theiss team advising Horizon Discovery Group was led by Partner Dieter Spranz, assisted by Partners Georg Kresbach and Matthias Unterrieder, Consultant Daniela Wieser, and Associate Clara Gordon.

Editorial note: Since the time of publishing this article, it has been reported that Covington & Burling also advised Horizon Discovery on matters of English law.

PRK Partners has acted as legal counsel to Raiffeisenbank a.s. in connection with a long-term syndicated loan facility in excess of CZK 2.68 billion (EUR 95.3 million) for refinancing the construction costs of an unnamed multifunctional business and shopping center in the Czech Republic.

The loan documentation was closed in December 2014.

Image source: Razvan Iosif / Shutterstock.com

Kambourov & Partners has successfully completed the process of obtaining regulatory clearance for the recent merger of two of the leading food retail chains on the Bulgarian food retail market: Carrefour and Piccadilly.

The merger of Bulgaria’s Picadilly supermarket chain and Carrefour, owned by MSC Bulgaria, was was initially announced in early November, 2014. The resulting joint venture will have a network of 75 stores and more than 3000 employees.

Image source: defotoberg / Shutterstock.com