CMS Warsaw has announced that it will be joined by five former Clifford Chance lawyers in August, including Slawomir Czerwinski and Mateusz Stepien, who will join as Partners, Jaroslaw Gajde, who will join as Counsel, Antoni Wandzilak, joining as Senior Associate, and Dominika Pietkun, joining as Associate.
According to CMS, Slawomir Czerwinski will be responsible for the “further development of cooperation with private equity funds." According to the firm, "for fifteen years he has been advising PE and VC funds on M&A transactions, disinvestments, and joint ventures. Slawomir has extensive experience in corporate transactional advisory services for sector investors, with particular focus on the healthcare, financial services, FMCG, and infrastructure sector.” Czerwinski is a graduate of the University of Warsaw and the Kozminski University. He spent the last 13 years with Clifford Chance, and the two before that with Baker McKenzie.
Mateusz Stepien has, for the last 12 years, “supported private equity funds in M&A transactions, restructuring and joint ventures,” according to CMS. “His experience focuses around transactional advisory for financial, real estate, infrastructure, FMCG, and healthcare companies.” Stepien holds a Master’s degree from the University of Warsaw. He will join CMS after spending almost 12 years with Clifford Chance.
“In the past three years our corporate transactions lawyers have worked on the largest number of mergers and acquisitions on the Polish market, which is why we offer our clients unique expertise and comprehensive transactional experience,” said Andrzej Posniak, Managing Partner of CMS Warsaw. “We have decided to strengthen our corporate transactions group by an absolutely fantastic (as experts and colleagues) team of lawyers with vast experience on the private equity market.“
“Once Covid-19 eases, the transactional processes are going to speed up,” added Partner Rafal Zwierz. “In Poland, one can find very interesting assets, also in industries that are less dependent on economic fluctuations and thus giving an opportunity for the expected return on investment even in periods of greater uncertainty.”
