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CEE Legal Matters Deal of the Year Award Details

CEE Legal Matters Deal of the Year Award

Submissions
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Submissions are now being accepted for the 2023 CEE Deal of the Year Awards – the most prestigious peer-selected legal awards in Central and Eastern Europe.

Explanation and Methodology

Only deals that are formally submitted will be considered, and all submissions must be received by CEE Legal Matters on or before January 12, 2024. Submissions received by December 4, 2023, will receive feedback as to whether there is anything wrong with the submission so that they can be corrected. Those received after December 4 will only receive a confirmation receipt but will be simply discarded if they do not follow the guidelines. 

Yes, there might be critical deals closed past December 4. If a firm exceeds the number of submissions allocated, we will reach out at the end of the year to any firms that have submitted more than that and ask them to pick which three of the submitted deals they'd like to put forward. Because of that, we encourage you to pick your top three deals and submit those before December 4, and should others come up, you can swap them out before January 12, 2024.

As always, the editors and staff of CEE Legal Matters play no role in the evaluation of submissions or the selection of winners. Instead, submissions are exclusively evaluated by two panels of prominent lawyers from across the region – with members of the second and final panel forbidden from voting in markets where their firms are among the finalists.

Mandatory rules for submissions can be found below. 

Those submissions that satisfy the mandatory criteria will be automatically forwarded to our Shortlist Panels, consisting of senior partners at leading firms and/or highly experienced and respected General Counsel in each CEE jurisdiction who have agreed to rank the submissions for complexity, size, and market significance. Their votes will be tabulated, and the resulting shortlists for each market in which a minimum of three deals were submitted will be announced on February 12, 2023. 

The shortlisted submissions will then be forwarded to the Final Selection Committee, consisting of CEELM Knowledge Partners and select other legal experts from across the region, who will review and rank the finalists, leading to the final determination of the winner for each market.

2024 Deals of the Year Awards Banquet

The 2023 CEE Deals of the Year Award winners will be announced at the 2024 CEE Deals of the Year Awards Banquet, scheduled in conjunction with the 2024 CEE General Counsel Summit.

Previous Years’ Awards

The CEE Deals of the Year Awards, recognizing the largest and most important deals in Central and Eastern Europe, were launched in 2017, with winners of the first DOTYs announced at the June 6, 2018, Deal of the Year Awards Banquet in Prague, and winners of the 2018 DOTYs announced at the March 28, 2019 Banquet in Budapest. The Covid-19 crisis forced the cancellation of two Deal of the Year Banquets, so winners of the 2019 awards were announced in the May, 2020 issue of the CEE Legal Matters magazine (here), and the 2020 awards were announced in the August, 2022 issue (here). The 2021 awards were announced at the 2022 Deal of the Year Awards Banquet in London and the winners are listed in the special June 2022 issue here. The 2022 awards were announced in April 2023 at an awards gala held in conjunction with the CEE General Counsel Summit and the winners are listed in the special June 2023 issue of the magazine here.

Submitting Deals: 

Submissions must be made using this online form on or before January 12, 2024. Please Note: Submissions received after that date, or not submitted using the online form will not be considered.

Important Updates from previous DOTYs: 

  1. Starting with 2023, we've introduced a rolling system of CEE Deal of the Year submissions to help firms avoid the stress of end-of-the-year deadlines. The cap of three submissions per firm per jurisdiction remains, so we will reach out at the end of the year to any firms that have submitted more than that and ask them to pick which three of the submitted deals they'd like to put forward. 
  2. As opposed to previous years, since 2023, eligibility of deals is determined based on the date of closing, not of signing. Only deals that were closed between January 1 and December 31, 2023, will be considered, without exception. Because of this change, some deals that were submitted for previous editions of the DOTYs might be eligible this year because of their closing, rather than signing date but deals that won a previous edition of the DOTYs are NOT eligible again for the jurisdiction(s) for which it was awarded the DOTY in the past. 
The submissions online form includes all other relevant instructions but, if you have any questions please contact CEE Legal Matters’ Managing Editor, Radu Cotarcea, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
 
Good luck, one and all!