Each day this week CEE Legal Matters will be counting down towards Friday's revelation of the 2019 CEE Deal of the Year winner, but today, before we start revealing which deals were voted off the island, we have the singular pleasure of announcing the finalists: Those five deals that received the greatest number of votes from the Final Selection Committee.
In alphabetical order, those deals (listed with the law firms that made them happen) are:
- Advent International and Zentiva’s Acquisition of Alvogen’s CEE Business (CMS (submitting firm); Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; White & Case)
- PPF Group’s Acquisition of CME (White & Case (submitting firm); Allen & Overy; Bondoc si Asociatii; Covington & Burling; Djingov, Gouginski, Kyutchukov & Velichkov; Sullivan & Cromwell)
- Severgroup’s Acquisition of TPG’s 34% Shareholding in Lenta and Subsequent Mandatory Tender Offer (Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton (submitting firm); Clifford Chance; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Ogier)
- Steinhoff Restructuring (Wolf Theiss (submitting firm); Allen & Overy; Binder Groesswang; Dorda; Eisenberger & Herzog; Fellner Wratzfeld & Partner; Gleiss Lutz; Linklaters; Latham & Watkins; Kirkland & Ellis)
- United Group’s Acquisition of Vivacom Bulgaria (CMS and Schoenherr (submitting firms); Latham & Watkins; Kambourov & Partners; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison)
The votes for Deal of the Year were cast by this year’s Final Selection Committee:
- Christian Blatchford of Energo-Pro (Czech Republic)
- Alexandra Doytchinova of Schoenherr (Bulgaria)
- Rene Frolov of Fort Legal (Estonia)
- Ron Given of Deloitte Legal (Czech Republic)
- Judith Gliniecki of CEE Equity Partners (Poland)
- Bora Kaya of Gama Power Systems (Turkey)
- Hugh Owen of Go2Law (Slovakia)
- Roman Pecenka of PRK Partners (Czech Republic)
- Andras Posztl of DLA Piper (Hungary)
- Mykola Stetsenko of Avellum (Ukraine)
- Pawel Szaja of Shearman & Sterling (United Kingdom)
- Damir Topic of Divjak, Topic & Bahtijarevic (Croatia)
Congratulations to all five finalists. Tomorrow the winnowing down begins!
