Gessel has advised the Polish Stem Cell Bank on the signing of a preliminary contract for the purchase of 100% of shares in Germany's Eticur from InGeneron and another owner.

Aequo has advised Dragon Capital on the acquisition of a six-story building in Kyiv.

SSW Pragmatic Solutions has advised Fitch Ratings, a big-three rating company, on a multi-stage restructuring of the Fitch Group in Europe.

Liniya Prava has assisted DNS Development with preparations for the first ever public-private partnership to build a school and kindergarten in the Primorsky Kraj territory of the Russian Far East.

TGS Baltic has successfully represented the Anti-Doping Bureau of Latvia in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Everlegal has advised the first innovation park in Ukraine, UNIT.City, on its receipt of EUR 50 million in financing from the European Investment Bank. CMS advised EIB on the deal.

Kinstellar has advised Max Aicher GmbH & Co. KG on the acquisition of the enterprises of the bankrupt Czech companies, Pilsen Steel s.r.o. and Pilsen Estates s.r.o., from insolvency administrator Jaroslav Broz. Tarpan Partners were on the insolvency administrator’s team, while Roedl & Partner served as tax advisors to the Max Aicher group.

Bojovic Draskovic Popovic & Partners is advising PEPCO on its plans to enter the Serbian market this fall. 

Clifford Chance has advised Vseobecna Uverova Banka a.s., the Slovak subsidiary of Intesa Sanpaolo, on the update of its EUR 5 billion covered bond program and another syndicated EUR 500 million issuance via the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. Allen & Overy reportedly advised joint lead managers Banca IMI S.p.A., Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, Danske Bank A/S, Erste Group Bank AG, and Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.

BBH has announced that long-time Partner Jiri Nemec has left the firm "to apply his talents to the business of financial investment."

Cobalt Riga has created Patents, Trademarks, and Designs and Data Protection, IT, and Media subgroups within its IP&IT Practice Group, "to address ever-growing demand for legal services in the fields of intellectual property, data protection, information technology, pharmaceuticals, and life sciences."

Tatjana Katalan-Dworak and Ulrike Sehrschon will co-head the Public Commercial Law practice group at Eisenberger & Herzog.

Marcin Pieklak has been promoted to Partner at Domanski Zakrzewski Palinka.

Austrian lawyers Clara Gordon, Matthias Schimka, and Robert Wagner have been promoted to Partner at Wolf Theiss Vienna, and Croatian lawyers Dora Gazi Kovacevic and Sasa Jovicic made Partner at Wolf Theiss Zagreb.

Mihaela Popescu has joined Idea Bank Romania as its new General Compliance Head.

Former Dentons Counsel Martin Fronek has rejoined White & Case in Prague.

Russian lawyer Pavel Novikov has been made Partner at Baker McKenzie in Moscow.

Harry Karampelis has been promoted to partner at the Lambadarios Law Firm in Greece.

The team of Georgiev, Todorov & Co. Law Offices is constantly monitoring the measures to deal with the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in the country. Our legal adviser Vili Datsov prepared detailed information in connection with the latest amendments to the Value Added Tax Act.

On 11 December 2019, the European Commission (the “Commission”) presented the European Green Deal (the “Green Deal”), with the aim that European Union becomes the first climate – neutral bloc in the world by 2050. To this purpose, European Union will be transformed into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there will be no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and the economic growth will be decoupled from resource use.

Recently we have received many inquiries from our clients regarding the e-signature regulations applicable in Serbia. The possibility of using an electronic signature has been especially explored since the outbreak of COVID 19 pandemic, due to the fact that working from home and social distancing have become a part of our everyday life. Below you will find some key considerations regarding the use of electronic signatures in Serbia.

The long-lasting bill of Law on The Act on the Protection of Competition (The Competition Act) was ratified by Turkish Parliement on 06.16.2020. This amendment is the most extensive reform of antitrust enforcement system since the enactment of the Competition Act in 1994. The most significant changes are explained below:

On 11 May 2020, a new Bank of Russia Regulation* “On Standards for the Issuance of Securities” (the “Regulation on Issuance Standards”) came into force. The regulator updated this Regulation in line with amendments* to the Federal Law “On the Securities Market”, which came into force on 1 January 2020.

On 28 June 2020 issue of official gazette Turkey Payment and Electronic Money Association Statute is published and with that Turkey Payment and Electronic Money Association is formed. Pursuant to Article 7 of this statute, “All payment and electronic money institutions are obliged to become a member of the association within one month after obtaining an operating license. Organizations that do not fulfill this obligation by the association shall be notified to the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey."

The articles of the Turkish Code of Obligations No.6098 (‘’TCO’’) had been postponed for workplaces lease agreements. It will be entering into force on July 1,2020 for office leases. The articles of the TCO will come into effect if not postponed again. This is known to cause considerable effects to the ongoing office lease agreements.

To this day, the domestic legal system has remained silent on how contracts concluded by email should be treated. However, legislation recently adopted in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic explicitly allows communication via email between a company and its private-individual members. Could this be the first step towards a more comprehensive legal acceptance of emails?

The Act on the termination of the state of emergency declared by Government Decree No. 40/2020 and on the transitional provisions in connection with the termination of the state of emergency were was adopted on 16 June 2020, meaning that the special provisions introduced during the state of emergency will not be applicable or may be of limited application subsequently. Dr. Nóra Óváry-Papp, lead attorney and dr. Helga Lieszkovszky, associate of Baker McKenzie Budapest summarize the expected changes in the legislative environment regarding the termination of the state of emergency.