Sorainen has advised Danielius Merkinas and Ceslovas Kazlauskas, the founders of NNL LT, on the acquisition of a 44% stake in NNL LT from Litcapital through an acquisition vehicle. TGS Baltic advised Litcapital.

The International Trade Practice team of Ilyashev & Partners has secured the introduction of provisional anti-dumping duties on imports to Ukraine of steel fasteners originating in the People’s Republic of China.

Filip & Company, working alongside Linklaters, has advised the Romanian Ministry of Public Finance on the issuance of Eurobonds in two tranches that raised EUR 3.3 billion from international markets.

White & Case has advised Alliance Oil Company Ltd. on a tender offer and consent solicitation in respect of its USD 500 million 7.000% Guaranteed Notes due 2020.

Sorainen has successfully represented the Polybius Foundation, which had conducted an initial coin offering, in a dispute involving one of the buyers, Maksim Velitsko, who was attempting to force a reversal of his token purchase. 

TGS Baltic and Dentons have advised Ignitis group on the approval of its renewed EUR 1.5 billion medium-term debt securities program and EUR 300 million bond issuance. Clifford Chance and Walles advised intermediaries BNP Paribas, Citi, J.P. Morgan, and Luminor bank.

Sorainen has advised Nasdaq CSD SE on a cross-border merger with Nasdaq CSD Iceland hf. 

BCGL has advised mBank S.A. on financing granted to PGB Holdco and its subsidiaries for the development and start-up of biogas plant facilities. Gessel advised PGB Holdco on the deal.

Wolf Theiss and Covington & Burling have advised MSD on the acquisition of 100% of Austrian biotech company Themis Bioscience. Brandl & Talos and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati advised the selling shareholders on the deal, which remains subject to regulatory approval, with McDermott Will & Emery and Herbst Kinsky advising Themis Bioscience. Financial details were not disclosed.

Erdos | Katona has opened its doors as a transactional boutique in Budapest.

CMS Counsel Michal Andruszkiewicz has been appointed the new head of the firm’s Poznan office, replacing Partner Wojciech Koczara, who steps down from the role after eight years but will continue to work from the firm's Warsaw office.

AGA Partners and Avellum have announced that the two Ukrainian firms, which merged almost two years ago, will officially separate, continuing their relationship as an alliance.

Moldova's Popa & Associates has become a fully integrated office of Grata International.

Mehtap Payne has joined Turkey's Guden Law Firm as its new Senior Legal Counsel and Head of Maritime Law.

Dentons Partner Anita Horvath has been appointed Co-Head of the firm’s Corporate and M&A Practice in Hungary, where she will work alongside Partner Rob Irving.

BGP Litigation has announces the opening of a Family Law practice.

Gorodissky & Partners lawyers Sergey Vasiliev, Valentin Kirilov, and Elizaveta Popova have joined the firm's partnership.

Former Glinska & Miskovic lawyers Ivona Andelovic, Petra Siketic, and Marko Tomic have left their former home to launch the new Andelovic, Siketic & Tomic law firm in Zagreb.

A scandal shaking the pharmaceutical market of Bosnia and Herzegovina for several years now related to the unlawful delisting of foreign medicines manufacturers has moved to a silent but almost thriller-tense phase as the country awaits the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s final decision. The current countdown was preceded by a unique crisis in 2018, when two subsidiaries of foreign pharma giants that had been delisted decided to fight back, even as a number of smaller players liquidated their companies and withdrew from the market. 

Cultivation of medical cannabis has become a lucrative business in recent years. Countries around the world have started legalizing this controversial crop, approving medical cannabis in particular in some capacity. In 2018, Canada made history by passing the Cannabis Act, thus becoming the first industrialized nation in the world (and second overall, after Uruguay) to pass legislation allowing adults to purchase marijuana. In addition, over 33 states in the USA have made the use of cannabis legal for medical purposes.

Recently, the spread of COVID-19 has been classified as a “pandemic” by the World Health Organization. With the global contagion of the epidemic, rumors have appeared regarding the development of new medicines and vaccines in Turkey, as everywhere else, and this situation has caused much misleading news and information to be published by the media and on the Internet.

In 2010, France’s Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament published the results of tests of breast implants produced by the French company PIP and banned their use, due to an increasing number of reports of incidents related to impaired implant integrity and subsequent health-related complications.

All European countries are now facing the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and each state is undertaking different measures to limit the spread of the virus. Recently, the Polish government has extended the so-called “export ban list” – a list of, in particular, medicinal products and medical devices the export or sale of which abroad may be subject to the objection of the Chief Pharmaceutical Inspector. This list grew by over a thousand items in the past month and has changed from a list of products subject to parallel export due to price differences to a list of products that we want to keep in Poland. Also, the President of the Office for Registration has asked pharmaceutical companies to consider launching clinical trials in these unique circumstances.

In recent years, and for multiple reasons, cyber-attacks against healthcare providers have increased significantly on a global level. First, IT platforms and devices used by healthcare providers have a technical diversity, while sources devoted to an integrated cybersecurity system for these IT platforms are often limited, making the IT systems vulnerable and ideal targets of potential cyber-attacks. Second, health data qualifies as “highly sensitive data,” which is considered very valuable on the black market compared to other types of personal data.

Similar to other areas of human endeavour, healthcare is bound to undergo the inevitable process of digital transformation. In the last two years the Czech Republic has taken its first steps towards digitizing its healthcare system by introducing mandatory electronic prescriptions and electronic sick notes and is about to introduce an electronic medications record. Unfortunately, there has been little progress on other fronts. Moreover, the Ministry of Health has yet to complete its draft law setting common standards and rules for eHealth, and it is unlikely to meet its current goal of having the law go into effect in 2021.

A well-known chain of pharmacies launched a pilot project to run medical vending machines in Slovakia last year. Although Slovakia has not had such machines in the past, they are not uncommon abroad.

In accordance with statistical data from 2018 and 2019, Latvia’s State Agency of Medicines concluded that there is a high risk of unavailability of state-reimbursed medicines in the Latvian pharmaceutical market, mainly as a consequence of the behavior of the wholesalers. The same conclusion was reached by the Competition Council of the Republic of Latvia which, in late 2018 and 2019, published two reports on the availability of medicines. Accordingly, it was concluded that the existing regulatory framework was unable to provide an effective market protection mechanism to reduce the risk that patients in Latvia might not have access to state-reimbursed medicines, because after these medicines are made available in Latvia by producers or importers, they are exported to third countries or other EU member states by other market participants.