Moravcevic, Vojnovic and Partners in cooperation with Schoenherr has advised Fortis Renewable Energy on the acquisition of a 180-megawatt solar power plant in Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised Assa Abloy on the acquisition of Skidata from the Kudelski Group. Baker McKenzie, working with Hogan Lovells, Holding Redlich, and Lenz & Staehelin, advised the Kudelski Group.

Papapolitis & Papapolitis, working with Reed Smith, has advised ECM Partners and Metric Capital Partners on the sale of Famar to MidEuropa. DLA Piper reportedly advised MidΕuropa.

Taylor Wessing has advised Recorde Asset Management and Forestay Group on the acquisition of a building in Budapest’s Gellert Hill area set to become the Moricz Student Living student residence and office building. Taylor Wessing, working with Kalman & Partners, also advised Recorde and Forstay on the acquisition financing obtained from Hypo Bank Noe.

MMD Advokati has advised APS Quattro Holding on the sale of Vantage Leasing to Alta Banka. Stanivuk & Manasijevski advised Alta Banka.

DLA Piper has advised TSG on the acquisition of Biuro Inzynierskie Convert.

BDK Advokati has advised Seyfor on the acquisition of 70% equity in the Serbian IT company M&I Systems. Stanivukovic reportedly advised the sellers.

Kocian Solc Balastik and Hillbridges have advised J&T Banka on Discovery Group’s Centro Nitra refinancing. DLA Piper reportedly advised Discovery Group.

Wardynski & Partners has advised Prime PV on the sale of a 10-megawatt solar farm in West Pomerania to Orlen.

CMS has advised mBank on financing to Green On Energy for the Profbud wind farm.

White & Case Turkish affiliate law firm GKC Partners has advised Ronesans Holding on its acquisition of Rabobank from Rabobank International Holding. A&O Shearman's Turkish affiliate Gedik & Eraksoy advised Rabobank.

Norton Rose Fulbright has advised the European Investment Bank on a EUR 42 million financing granted to Maspex Group.

ZSP Advokati has promoted Jasna Milosavljevic, Jelisaveta Stanisic, and Nikola Sugaris to Partners.

Former Kochanski & Partners Partners Marek Jezewski has joined Eversheds Sutherland's Polish office to launch a new Arbitration & Complex Commercial Disputes Practice.

EY Law has promoted Katrin Speigner to Partner in its Salzburg office.

Zepos & Yannopoulos has appointed Partner Paris Tzoumas as its new Head of Finance.

Former CMS Associate Martin Balaz has joined Fairsquare in Bratislava as Partner.

Former White & Case Associate Petra Zunova has become the Director of Legal Affairs at Phrase.

Wojciech Olszewski has returned to CEE to become the Legal Director for CEE & Strategic Commercial Affairs EMEA at Align Technology, in Wroclaw.

Bogdan Ilea has joined Popescu & Asociatii as Partner and the firm's new Head of Regulatory, Government & Public Affairs practice.

E+H has promoted Arndt Blaschka to Partner.

Leaua Damcali Deaconu Paunescu has promoted former Managing Associate Andra Soare-Filatov to Partner.

Turkish Lawyer Ozge Ayoz has been appointed to Vice President of Legal for Central Europe, South East Europe and Eastern Europe Market Operations at Procter & Gamble in Geneva.

Former Rowan Legal Of Counsel Lucie Smrkovska has joined CTP as its new Group Director of Legal Leasing in the Czech Republic.

From 29 July 2024, the administrative service fees relating to procedures for land registry, plot formation, land surveying and mapping, and the provision of data from the land register and the state databases will be increased significantly.

Chaired by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s Strategic Investment Council plays a pivotal role in shaping the nation’s economic landscape. The Council’s primary objective is to attract and facilitate strategic investments that drive sustainable economic growth and development.

On 26 June 2024, the Romanian Competition Council (the "RCC") announced that it had conducted a dawn raid as part of an investigation concerning the possible abuse of a superior bargaining position by a company active in the supply of liquid medicinal oxygen against a public hospital. The investigation has been launched ex officio as a result of information received from public sources. The case is noteworthy as it marks the first time the RCC has launched a review regarding an alleged abuse of superior bargaining position, a relatively new type of infringement under Romanian competition rules.

Serbia’s 2020 Trademark Law introduced a novel provision to local law: the trademark holders have been explicitly empowered to claim profit surrender in cases where the infringement was not intentional or grossly negligent.

On 14 June 2024, the Serbian Competition Commission (the “Commission”) initiated two proceedings against companies belonging to the Agromarket Group for allegedly implementing notifiable concentrations without obtaining prior approval from the Commission. The acquisitions occurred in 2020 and 2024 and both concern targets located outside of Serbia.

You may have noticed that there has been a discussion about an amendment to the Act on Protection of Competition in recent weeks. If it passes the legislative procedure, what would it mean in practice?

In its latest decision of May 16, 2024 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) reflected on the Hungarian foreign VAT refund regime. ECJ established once again that non-compliance with formal requirements should not prevent reimbursement of VAT provided that substantive requirements can and have been satisfied.

On June 24, 2024, the Act on the Protection of Whistleblowers (the "Whistleblowers Act") was published in the Journal of Laws, which means that most of its provisions will come into force on September 25, 2024.

Poland has finally implemented the EU Whistleblowing Directive. The new law will enter into force on 25 September 2024, leaving little time to adapt to the new regulations. We highlight the key privacy implications of implementing the whistleblowing procedures in Poland and outline the actions organisations need to take in the upcoming weeks.

High-quality, diverse, and extensive datasets are fundamental for improving machine learning model performance, and web scraping helps gather the necessary data to develop more robust and generalizable models. Web scraping pose different legal challenges, such as data protection, copyright and contractual law related issues. Intellectual property concerns arise as website content, like text, images, and data, is often copyrighted, and scraping without the copyright owner’s permission may lead to infringement claims. Further to this, many websites prohibit scraping in their terms of service, and violating these terms can also result in legal action against the operators of web scrapers.

In the dynamic Central and Eastern European legal sector, the trend of law firms merging and consolidating has become increasingly prominent. This trend is driven by a quest for synergies, expanding the client base, achieving cost savings, and gaining a competitive edge in the war for talent.

Almost two years ago, I discussed in an article published in CEE Legal Matters the presence of “green” bonds and financings in Croatia. The thesis put forward in that article was focused on the necessity of companies and financial service providers to be more “green” in terms of the products they offer on the Croatian (capital) markets and goals on sustainability which should be accomplished.

RTPR has assisted Vectr Holdings, through its subsidiary Vectr Realty Holdings, in relation to the indirect acquisition of 100% stake in the company that owns The Landmark from funds managed by Revetas Capital and affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management.

RTPR has assisted Global Records and Stefan Lucian, the founder and CEO of the company, in the process of selling a 25% stake in the company to Believe, one of the world’s leading digital music companies and of setting up the terms of their strategic partnership.

The company transfer also successfully secures the future of SPORT 2000 in Austria.

Delighted to have contributed the chapters on Bulgaria in the latest edition of Chambers and Partners Corporate Governance Global Practice Guide 2024, alongside some of the leading international corporate law firms. Our partners Pavel Hristov and Dragomir Stefanov elaborate on key CG issues.

We are proud to announce that KCG Partners have advised Corvinus Zrt., the Hungarian state-owned investment fund in the strategic acquisition of majority interest of Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport.