DLA Piper has advised Romanian grain and oilseed trader East Grain on the sale of a majority stake in the company and its Hungarian subsidiary to the Czech Republic's Agrofert group. Schoenherr advised the buyer.
According to DLA Piper, the deal was undertaken through a capital increase and "ranks as one of the most important foreign investments for the Romanian agribusiness ecosystem in recent years. The deal will also allow East Grain, already active in Romania, Hungary, and Serbia, to explore new opportunities, increase its capacities, and enlarge its market footprint."
With this transaction, Agrofert entered the Romanian agribusiness market, expanding its footprint in the country, where it was already active in the fertilizers distribution sector, Schoenherr reported.
Agrofert is a Czech conglomerate holding company headquartered in Prague. It operates agriculture, food, chemical, construction, logistics, forestry, energy, and mass media companies. It has over 250 subsidiary companies and focuses primarily on Central Europe.
East Grain was founded in Romania in 2007 and expanded to Hungary in 2017. It operates in grain and oilseeds trading, logistics, grain storage, and feed and inputs production. In 2021, the group traded 500,000 tons of grain and oilseeds, supplied inputs for 40,000 hectares of land, transported 20,000 truckloads of goods, and stored 60,000 tons of grains.
The DLA Piper team included Country Managing Partner Marian Dinu, Senior Associate Sandra Cahu, and Associate Noemi Popa.
The East Grain in-house team was led by Corporate Legal Counsel Zsuzsa Nagy.
The Schoenherr team was led by Partner Madalina Neagu and included Bucharest-based Partner Georgiana Badescu, Local Partner Madalina Mitan, Senior Attorney at Law Mihaela Popescu, and Attorney at Law Alexandra Smahon, and Budapest-based Local Partner Kinga Hetenyi and Attorney at Law Adrian Menczelesz.