Norton Rose Fulbright has advised Inter Cars S.A. and its group companies on a PLN 1.1 billion loan facility. Clifford Chance, working with Tark Grunte Sutkiene (TGS), Divjak, Topic & Bahtijarevic (DTB) and Montanios & Montanios, advised Bank Pekao S.A. (agent), mBank S.A. (security agent), and  Bank Handlowy w Warszawie S.A. (Citi Handlowy), ING Bank Slaski S.A., Bank BGZ BNP Paribas S.A., DNB Bank, and Caixa Bank as mandated lead arrangers on the facility.

Schoenherr has advised Kansai Paint Co Ltd., from Osaka, on the acquisition of the Helios Coatings Group from Ring International Holding AG ("RIH"), GSO Capital Opportunities Fund II (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., and Templeton Strategic Emerging Markets Fund IV, LDC. The sellers were advised by Brandl & Talos.

The new Croatian government is on the top of Danijela Simeunovic’s list of encouraging signs for businesses and foreign investors in the country.

Pre-employment screenings of potential job candidates, commonly known as background checks, are not always an easy task for employers.

In The Corner Office, we invite Managing Partners at law firms from across the region to share information about the strategies they employ to keep their teams motivated, effective, and focused. For this issue, we asked them to reveal what sorts of firm retreats and activities they host and/or organize for their lawyers.

They say there is a grain of truth in every joke. Ten years ago, the movie Man of the Year was released, and in it Tom Dobbs, Robin Williams’s character, joked: “Soon, all of your appliances will speak to each other. You’ll get on the scale and it’ll go, ‘I’ve talked to the microwave; forget it, pal.’” A decade later, that statement is nothing but the truth. Well, maybe, we could still possibly find a grain of joke in it. 

Milan Lomic is the General Counsel Adria & Balkan at L’Oreal, a company that he joined in October 2012. Prior to that he worked for Metro Cash & Carry as a Legal Advisor and Antitrust Officer. He has also worked as a Legal Advisor at Unicredit Bank Serbia and as an Assistant to the Judge at the Fifth Municipal Court in Belgrade.

Based in Zagreb, Anita Pejic Ilisevic is the Head of Legal for Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina for Henkel, where, in May 2016, she was also appointed the Compliance Representative Adria Region. Prior to Henkel, Ilisevic was a Corporate Lawyer with Tisak.

Whereas the leading commercial law firms in Serbia report growth and opportunity, their counterparts in Croatia demonstrate an acceptance of the stop-and-start nature of that market. In an extended lunchtime conversation about with CEE Legal Matters, Divjak, Topic & Bahtijarevic Partner Damir Topic and Wolf Theiss Managing Partner Luka Tadic-Colic displayed a resigned sense of humor about the challenges they face in Croatia and a willingness to take things as they come.

The Balkans is a fragile region where bad news come first and good news last. As a rule, economic crises hit the Balkan countries first, and the Balkans is usually the last region to experience economic rebound.

Schoenherr is reporting that, on September 30, 2016, Michael Lagler was elected as the new Managing Partner at the firm, where he will take over from Christoph Lindinger, who has led the Central and Eastern European law firm for the past 16 years. Lagler's term will begin at the start of the firm’s next fiscal year, on February 1, 2017.

Bojanovic & Partners, in Serbia, has announced the October 1, 2016 launch of a new alliance of nine leading independent law firms across the Balkans.  

Case: Tobias McFadden vs Sony Music Entertainment Germany GmbH

CMS (on M&A) and DLA Piper (on financing) have advised Erste Group Immorent on the sale of the five-star hotel and apartment complex Radisson Blu Resort & Spa, Dubrovnik Sun Gardens to Chinese investor ADC GmbH. Savoric & Partner advised the buyer on the deal.

The relative success of the center-right Croatian Democratic Union in the September 11th extraordinary parliamentary election in Croatia “should be good for Croatia and good for business" reports Boris Savoric, Senior Partner at Savoric & Partners in Zagreb, if the party succeeds in forming a government with one of the minority parties in the country.

The Buzz is a short summary of the major and relevant topics of interest in Central and Eastern Europe, provided by those best positioned to know: law firm partners and legal journalists/commentators on the ground in each CEE country.

The Buzz is a short summary of the major and relevant topics of interest in Central and Eastern Europe, provided by those best positioned to know: law firm partners and legal journalists/commentators on the ground in each CEE country.

Divjak, Topic & Bihtijarevic has reported that the 2015 acquisition by Heineken Croatia of Lasko Grupa (a Croatian entity previously owned by Pivovarna Lasko, Slovenia) has closed, and that Lasko Grupa has now completely merged into Heineken Croatia. DTB advised Heineken Croatia, with Wolf Theiss advising Lasko.