Sorainen has helped the Turkey Wealth Fund obtain approval from the Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade of the Republic of Belarus for the acquisition of control over Belarusian Telecommunications Network CJSC, one of three Belarusian mobile network operators and a member of the Turkcell group.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer the EBRD, SACE, DEG, IFC, the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Barings, Credit Agricole CIB, Deutsche Bank, UniCredit, Akbank, Isbank, and the Turkish Industrial Development Bank on the EUR 1.1 billion restructuring of the PPP agreement related to the development, construction, maintenance and operation of the Ankara Etlik Integrated Health Campus.

Schoenherr has advised the MET Group on the acquisition of a 100% stake in a 42MW wind park in the Kavarna region of Bulgaria from Enel Green Power. Memery Crystal provided English law advice to the MET Group. CMS advised Enel Green Power on the transaction, which remains subject to regulatory clearance. 

DLA Piper’s Kyiv office has advised Polhem Infra on the Ukrainian aspects of its SEK 9.4 million acquisition of the Swedish telecommunication services provider Telia Carrier from the Telia Company.

Rymarz Zdort has advised MCI.PrivateVentures (a subfund of MCI.EuroVentures 1.0) and AMC Capital IV Albatros S.a r.l. (a company advised by Mezzanine Management) on their sale of 100% of the shares in ATM S.A. to Global Compute Infrastructure LP, a platform supported by the Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division. White & Case advised Global Compute Infrastructure on the transaction.

BPV Huegel and Lenz & Staehelin have advised Raiffeisen Informatik on the sale of the remaining shares in SoftwareONE Holding in an accelerated book-building process. Citigroup, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan and UBS acted as joint bookrunners for the placement.

Gessel has advised Poland-based paraffin producer Polwax on the public offering of its shares with subscription rights and admission of shares to trading on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The value of the bonds is estimated at PLN 20 million.

KLB Legal has advised Pilulka Lekarny on its initial public offering on the Start market of the Prague Stock Exchange. Wood & Company Financial Services served as the arranger on the offering, which was valued at CZK 250 million.

Havel & Partners, working pro bono, has helped the Plant-for-the-Planet organization establish its presence in the Czech Republic.

Milovan Jocovic has been promoted to Partner at the Stevic Dulic Law Firm in Belgrade.

Deloitte Legal has announced that a dozen lawyers will be leaving White & Case in Poland — including Tomasz Ostrowski (who will take over at Deloitte Legal Warsaw as Managing Partner), Aneta Urban, Katarzyna Jakubiak, Sylwia Opiatowska, and Michal Oles — to join its Warsaw office.

Vladek Kramek has been promoted to Partner at Havel & Partners in the Czech Republic.

Former Clifford Chance Counsel Grzegorz Abram has joined White & Case’s Global Debt Finance Practice in Warsaw.

Former Allen & Overy Senior Associate Utku Unver has joined the Projects and Energy practice of Norton Rose Fulbright’s Istanbul-based associated firm, which has rebranded as a result as the Inal Unver Attorney Partnership.

Real Estate specialist Dominika Vesela has made Partner at Eversheds Sutherland in Prague.

TGS Baltic lawyer Violeta Zeppa-Priedite has become Head of the White Collar Crime & Corporate Investigations practice in the firm's Latvian office.

Former Emaar Turkey Director of Legal Affairs Huseyin Topuzoglu has joined Alliance Healthcare as its Legal Director in Istanbul.

Alexey Statsenko, the Regional General Counsel for Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe & Central Asia at EY, has been promoted to equity partner at EY.

Due to the extended economic effects of the coronavirus epidemic, the October tax package announced by the Hungarian Government was aimed to stimulate the investing climate. According to the Hungarian ‘economic protection operational body’, there are three different ways to revive the economy (i.e.: tax reduction, simplification of the administration, boosting investments).

As of 12 October 2020, the Register of Healthcare Institutions is kept at the Business Registers Agency of the Republic of Serbia (“SBRA”), in accordance with the new Health Care Act, which entered into force on 11 April 2019. This means that health care institutions have the obligation to register in the Register of Health Care Institutions, which is kept at the SBRA as of today. In addition to this register, SBRA will keep a single record of entities in health care, which will contain consolidated data on health care institutions and private practice on the territory of the Republic of Serbia.

The Hungarian Competition Authority (HCA) has initiated an investigation against TikTok, the popular social media platform. TikTok's capacity to generate vast amounts of consumer data and shower its users with ads has already sounded several alarm bells as regulators attempt to make sense of the phenomena that is digitalisation. The HCA took the initiative to scrutinise the platform with a focus on consumer protection.

Turkish Constitutional Court granted a decision (“Decision”) on September 17, 2020 regarding an applicant’s claims on violation of right to request protection of personal data under right to privacy and freedom of communication due to inspection of correspondences on corporate e-mail account and termination of employment contract on the grounds of these correspondences.

According to Recital (47) of the GDPR, processing of personal data for direct marketing purposes may be based on a legitimate interest (Art. 6 (1) letter f) of the GDPR). However, where direct marketing is performed through electronic means of communication, the special legislation becomes applicable, in particular, EU Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (the “E-privacy Directive”) implemented in the Romanian legislation under Law no. 506/2004 on processing of personal data and protection of private life in the electronic communications sector (the “E-privacy Law”).

At the beginning of October 2020, the prime minister has announced that the Hungarian Government continues the family protection measures and for this purpose, the VAT tax rate of new flats will be again 5% instead of the general VAT rate of 27% in case of constructions commenced until 31 December 2022.

Although nowadays there are more and more situations in which legal entities are called to criminal responsibility for a wide range of offences, the criminal liability of a legal entity remains an incomplete and insufficiently regulated institution, which is why the current reality has known numerous practical inconveniences.

Foreign investors often have misperceptions about doing business in Ukraine. Below, I debunk the 5 most common myths, as well as 3 more that reflect the most recent improvements in the business climate.

Economic recovery in Budapest (and Hungary) is predicted to follow an elongated L-shape curve, meaning that the effects of the pandemic are to be present and felt until at least 2023. As a kind of crisis management contribution by the sectors that were less affected by the pandemic, companies operating in these sectors would be expected to be temporarily more involved in public burden-bearing to alleviate the negative economic effects of COVID-19 in Budapest.