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Boyanov & Co. reports having advised the European Investment Bank on several loan transactions throughout 2014 to local Bulgarian banks.

The firm, the Bulgarian arm of the new SEE Legal alliance, was appointed to the legal panel of the EIB and the Allied Irish Banks. According to a Boyanov & Co. press release, the firm “advised EIB on several loan transactions with local banks whereby EIB provides loans to the local banks secured with domestic governmental bonds, which the local banks use to on-lend to SMEs in Bulgaria.”

According to the firm, difficulties arose when the EIB wanted the collateral to be held at Clearstream Luxembourg and to be pledged as financial collateral under Luxembourg law, which presented a legal challenge under Bulgarian law, which required that domestic governmental bonds be held at registers with the Bulgarian National Bank and that the financial collateral of such bonds be registered with the registers of the BNB. The firm “helped solve this challenge by consulting with the BNB and the Ministry of Finance of Bulgaria, and advising on amendments to BNB regulations to align them with the EU Financial Collateral Directive. 

Sorainen has advised Milsa, a major Lithuanian company trading in granite and crushed dolomite stone on the acquisition of a minority stake in Fegda.

Milsa is one of the biggest suppliers of aggregates materials in Lithuania. Fegda is a Lithuanian company engaged in road construction, civil engineering, and hot mixed asphalt production. The size of the stake and the price of the sale was not disclosed. 

Sorainen Partner Laimonas Skibarka led the firm’s team on the deal, assisted by Senior Associate Mantas Petkevicius.

Martin Solc, one of the founding partners of the Czech Kocian Solc Balastík law firm, was elected Vice President of the International Bar Association today at the organization’s Annual Conference in Tokyo.

   

Martin Solc (ksb.cz)

Solc will assume the second-ranking position in the IBA in 2015 from current Vice President, US lawyer David Rivkin. 

“I am very honored by the trust the IBA Council has expressed in electing me Vice President and consider this achievement as recognition of my more than twenty-year involvement in the IBA and as an endorsement of what I pursued as the Secretary-General over the last two years,” Solc said.

KSB released a statement today explaining that, “in his two-year term as Vice President, [Solc] plans to further the discussion on how the IBA operates, such as whether to provide online access to conferences and seminars to a wider number of professionals. Martin also believes that in addition to being the global voice of the legal community the IBA should boost its regional involvement.”

Martin Vychopen, the Chairman of the Czech Bar Association, was enthusiastic about the vote, saying, “I would like to extend my warm congratulations to Martin. No Czech lawyer has ever held a higher position in our profession. At the same time, Martin has not forgotten to express the interests of the Czech Bar Association within the IBA and I think it is thanks to him that Czech lawyers have a good reputation on an international level. I hope that the IBA’s tradition – that the Vice-President usually becomes the President – will continue and that Martin will be elected IBA President in 2017.”

The IBA was established in 1947 by 37 national bar associations. The London-based organization now has over 50,000 individual members, coming from over 200 individual bar associations. It holds over 60 conferences annually, which are attended by more than 5,000 lawyers. The 2014 Annual Conference in Tokyo was opened by the Japanese Prime Minister and the opening ceremony was attended by the Emperor and Empress of Japan. In 2015, the semi-annual meeting of IBA bodies will be held in Prague.

Dentons has advised Modertrans, a Poznan-based company, in tender proceedings organized by Tramwaje Slaskie [Silesian Interurbans] for the procurement of 12 low-floor tramways as a part of the “Modernization of tramway and trolleybus infrastructure in the Upper Silesian Conurbation together with accompanying infrastructure” project.

The firm represented Modertrans in several appeal proceedings pending before the National Appeals Chamber, which ultimately resulted in a ruling (on October 13, 2014) enabling Modertrans to sign the contract with Tramwaje Slaskie. 

According to Dentons, “the NAC ruling marks yet another victory of [Modertrans] in tenders organized in the light rail sector. Recently, after the successful outcome of the proceedings before the NAC [during which the company was also assisted by Dentons], Modertrans won a tender organized by ZKM Gdansk — the urban transport company in Gdansk — for the modernization of 14 three-section trams.”

In both proceedings, Dentons’ services to Modertrans were provided by Partner Aldona Kowalczyk, Counsel Michal Drozdowicz, and Associates Agnieszka Gilowska and Artur Kawik, with the support of the remaining members of the Public Procurement Law practice at Dentons.

Maciej Mataczynski, the Managing Partner of the newly-formed Sojka Maciak Mataczynski law firm in Poland, has been appointed to a team of scholars selected to advise the Polish Ministry of the Treasury.

The team — consisting of experts in civil, commercial, and business law — will provide advice on policy related to state-owned companies. The priority defined by the Ministry is to develop a consistent strategy of managing assets. One of the outcomes of this approach has been the clasification of Polish state-ownes companies into two lists: the first one includes 22 businesses of crucial importance for the Polish economy, while the remaining 190 companies on the other list are to undergo ownership changes.  

In addition to Maciej Mataczynski, from Adam Mickiewicz University, in Poznan, the team consists of Professor Janina Ciechanowicz-McLean (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin), Professor Elwira Marszalkowska-Krzes (University of Wroclaw), Professor Marek Michalski (Stefan Wyszynski University, Warsaw), Professor Michal Romanowski (University of Warsaw) and Professor Andrzej Szumanski (Jagiellonian University, Krakow).

The Minister of the Treasury, Wlodzimierz Karpinski, expressed his confidence in the team: “I am grateful to the team members for their readiness to collaborate and contribute. We have gained invaluable support of recognized experts in matters related to law and economics, enabling us to develop a consistent and transparent policy of supervising and managing Treasury assets that will benefit shareholders and Polish economy.” 

Mataczynski released a statement describing his expectations as well: “The appointment of the team is a major milestone that brings together the worlds of academia, business and administration. The Minister, managing more than PLN 100 billion worth of assets, should be able to take advantage of the best experiences and achievements offered by Polish science. I hope that the team will serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas and as a platform for developing better technical solutions and standards of supervision universally applicable to managing state-controlled assets.”

This very posting represents the 1000th news article on the CEE Legal Matters website.

Yes, that means that, prior to this one piece, we published 999 deals, lateral senior moves, and partner appointments. We wanted to mark this occasion so we took a quick look back at our website since its launch, and made several discoveries — some interesting, some exciting, some fun, some slightly awkward.

As a thank you to all our regular readers we decided to share these findings with you:

• Most searched name on the CEELM site: “Radu Catarcea” — Guess we know which of the editors are more popular…ahem…now only if they could spell my name right…
• Most searched lawyer name on the CEELM site: “Cigdem Dayan” (ING Bank)
• Most Facebook likes on a move: “Michalis Kosmopoulos” (Drakopoulos) — 110 Likes
• Most read move: “Former Musat Lawyers Set Up New Firm”
• Most read deal: “Schoenherr Advises on Largest M&A Transaction in Slovenia”
• Most shared/republished story (including by Chambers & Partners): “First Turkish Law Firm Merger Announced“
• Funniest google key word search that landed on our website: “Eastern European Barely Legal” — we imagine they were bit disappointed to land here, on an article about competition matters in Serbia.
• Number of “editorial notes” included at the end of articles to correct mistakes: 4 — Unacceptable!
• Most embarrassing of the four editorial notes: “The original article reported wrongly that it was the Latvian state who carried out this audit, not the Estonian one. We apologize for the confusion created.” — Well..at least we owned up to it.   
• # 74 most searched google key phrase that directed readers to our site: “Why Are Lawyers So Expensive”

Hansberry Tomkiel has announced its existence as a “unique law boutique, specialising in competition law,” in Poland. 

   

Dorothy Hansberry-Biegunska and Malgorzata Krasnodebska-Tomkiel

The firm consists of Dorothy Hansberry-Biegunska, an American lawyer, and Malgorzata Krasnodebska-Tomkiel, former president of the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK).

The firm will provide advice and representation in cartel investigations; distribution and vertical agreements; competition-related litigation; merger control; regulatory matters that involve unfair competition, consumer protection, and state aid issues; and compliance training.

Hansberry-Biegunska is a former US antitrust prosecutor, business executive, with what the new firm describes as “extensive legal and business experience in Poland.” In a statement released by the firm, she states that “Malgorzata and I combine the experiences of a prosecutor, lawyer-practitioner, business executive and lawyer-regulator, which is something very unique in Poland—and for that matter, in any market. I believe our clients and their businesses will be well served by our firm.”

Krasnodebska-Tomkiel’s statement is similarly optimistic: “After many years of enforcing and establishing competition law, I shall be advising entrepreneurs on how to observe it and how to decide upon the best course of action if accused of violating the law, adds This is a personal challenge for a lawyer-regulator, to now measure up to the law in practice and to effectively support clients in their business decisions.”

Lavrynovych & Partners has acted as legal counsel to the international MoneyGram payment system with respect to its registration in the Ukrainian register of payment systems, as well as the approval by the National Bank of Ukraine of the company’s conditions and “procedure of operation” in Ukraine.

The firm reports that its services “consisted of the preparation of the set of documents required by the NBU and the support of its consideration by the NBU till the approval of the decision on the registration of payment system.”

MoneyGram is a money transfer company based in Dallas, Texas, in the United States. The company services individuals and businesses through a network of agents and financial institution customers, and its network consists of more than 330,000 branches around the world.

The Lavrynovych & Partners team consisted of Partner Iryna Marushko and Senior Associate Anna Pushkaryova.

Wardynski & Partners has announced that Senior Counsel Tomasz Zasacki was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

According to the firm, “the honor was given in recognition of Zasacki’s distinguished contribution to the democratic transformation of Poland through his defense of citizens persecuted by the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland in the 1980s.”

The Order of Polonia Restituta (Order of Rebirth of Poland) is one of Poland’s highest Orders, and it can be conferred for outstanding achievements in the fields of education, science, sport, culture, art, economics, national defense, social work, civil service, or for furthering good relations between countries. It was established on February 4, 1921.

Zasacki joined Wardnski & Partners in 1996 and was a Partner at the firm from 2000-2011 before stepping back to his current Senior Counsel role.

Lawin has advised the four largest telecommunication companies in Lithuania on the creation of Numerio Perkelimas, which, along with UAB Mediafon, has been selected by the country’s Communications Regulatory Authority to become the new administrator of the central database for the portability of phone numbers. Numerio Perkelimas is a non-profit entity established by AB TEO LT, UAB Omnitel, UAB Bite Lietuva, and UAB Tele2. 

Numerio Perkelimas will collaborate with Mediafon to ensure the ability of customers to keep their telephone number when moving to another provider of public telephone services, changing the location of where services are provided, or the manner in how those services they are provided. It will assume its role on January 1, 2016.

LAWIN provided consultancy services to AB TEO LT, UAB Omnitel, UAB Bit? Lietuva, and UAB Tele2 with regard to the establishment of the joint legal entity, competition law, and commercial collaboration.