Theis Klauberg took a circuitous route to managing his eponymous firm in the Baltics. He began his education in Germany, at the University of Hamburg, Heidelberg University, and Humboldt University of Berlin, before obtaining an LL.M. at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, then concluding his formal education with an MBA at the Baltic Management Institute. His professional career has been no less diverse, as he has worked in Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, and Zimbabwe.

Scott Senecal is an American lawyer with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in Moscow. His practice focuses on financial and corporate law, and he has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, capital market transactions, and syndicated loans.

The Deal: In July, CEE Legal Matters reported that Norton Rose Fulbright had advised Grupa Lotos SA on the USD 500 million refinancing of loan facilities contracted by the company in connection with its “Program 10+” financing. Clifford Chance advised a consortium of domestic and international banks including Bank Polska Kasa Opieki S.A., Caixabank S.A., Erste Group Bank AG, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Europe) S.A., ING Bank Slaski S.A., Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A, Powszechna Kasa Oszczednosci Bank Polski S.A., and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Bank EU AG on the deal, with Credit Agricole, CIB, and BNP Paribas SA serving as agents.

CEELM: Run us through your background, and how you ended up in your current role with Karanovic & Partners.

The Deal: In July, CEE Legal Matters reported that the Slovenian office of ODI Law had represented AIK Banka and SKB Banka (Societe Generale’s Slovenian entity), on the EUR 36 million cross-border syndicated debt refinancing of the Don Don Group – a regional industrial bakers with plants in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. Selih & Partnerji advised Don Don on the deal.

Hill Dickinson Senior Associate Anthony Paizes is a solicitor admitted to practice in England and Wales, Greece, South Africa and the Cayman Islands. He practices in the areas of shipping and asset finance, corporate finance, private equity, banking, debt finance, and corporate and commercial law. He speaks English, Greek, and Afrikaans fluently. We reached out to him – in English – to learn more about his path from Africa to Athens.

Edward Baring’s career comes closer to spanning the four corners of the globe than most. An Englishman, Baring completed his studies in the United Kingdom before moving to Moscow as a finance lawyer with Allen & Overy in the early years of this century. In 2016, Baring – having, in the interim, joined the partnership at Herbert Smith Freehills – relocated to South Africa to become managing partner of the firm’s Johannesburg office. He spoke to us about his unusual career. 

South African Liesel Beukes is a dual-qualified lawyer and Content Marketing Manager at Schoenherr in Vienna, where she manages the firm’s highly-regarded annual RoadMap publication and assists lawyers across the firm’s 14 offices with marketing, business development, and press relations.

Frances Gerrard, a member of CMS’s Corporate and M&A team in Prague, is a long way from her home in Australia. We spoke to her about the path that brought her to the Czech capital.

The Deal: Earlier this year, CEE Legal Matters reported that Clifford Chance Prague had advised CTP, an industrial developer in the CEE region, on a EUR 1.9 billion underwriting package agreement with Erste Group Bank AG; Ceska Sporitelna a.s.; Societe Generale S.A. and Komercni Banka a.s.; and UniCredit S.p.A. and UniCredit Bank Czech Republic and Slovakia a.s. White & Case advised the lenders on the agreement, which covered CTP’s Czech industrial portfolio consisting of over 200 buildings and covering 2.7 million square meters of industrial space.

Hungary’s Danubia Patent and Law Office traces its roots back almost three quarters of a century. Danubia Partners Eszter Szakacs and Zsofia Klauber explain how the firm has managed to stay on top of the market for so long, through significant periods of technological, political, legal, and historical transformation in the country and culture around it.

In February 2019 CEE Legal Matters reported that Integrites and K&L Gates had advised Norwegian utility-scale wind power developer NBT and Paris-based renewable energy independent power producer Total Eren on their entrance into a framework agreement with a syndicate of foreign lenders, including the EBRD and the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation, for the construction of the Syvash wind farm – one of the largest in Europe. Redcliffe Partners and Clifford Chance advised the lenders and J.P. Morgan Securities Plc as debt coordinator.

In September 2018 Schoenherr Partner Thomas Kulnigg advised crowd-investing company Conda AG on the digitalization of its shares, allowing the registered shares to be managed via blockchain technology. The project represented the first-ever digitalization of shares linked to digital tokens in an Austrian joint stock company. The tokens were digital units that were mined exclusively by Conda on a blockchain (dis-tributed ledger technology) protocol and then given to company shareholders. When a shareholder trans-fers a token to another person, the transfer is recorded in the blockchain and, on that basis, the transfer is also registered in Conda’s share ledger. The transfer of a token is thus the equivalent of a share transfer.

Virginia Murray is a partner in Watson Farley & Williams’ International Project & Structured Finance Group and is Head of the Greek law Corporate, Projects and Finance practice in the firm’s Athens office. She graduated from Cambridge in 1989 and moved to Greece and qualified as a Greek lawyer in 1998. She is fluent in Greek.

Earlier this year, CEE Legal Matters reported that Herbst Kinsky Rechtsanwalte had advised Marinomed Biotech AG on its February 1, 2019 debut on the Vienna Stock Exchance, with Weber & Co. advising Erste Group Bank AG (as sole global coordinator) and Goetzpartners Securities Ltd (as co-lead manager) on the IPO. Marinomed’s was the first successful IPO in Austria since BAWAG’s in 2017.

Emmanuel Kaufman has a unique profile: An Argentinian lawyer and commercial and international investment arbitration specialist who has spent the last 12 years in two of the leading law firms in Austria. He has spent the last three and a half years as a partner at Knoetzl, where he focuses on complex arbitration proceedings in the construction, telecommunications, IT, gaming, and soft-beverages industries.

Simona Marin is an English- and New York-qualified partner in CMS’s International Finance team in Bucharest, where she focuses on project finance, real estate finance and other financing structures, both syndicated and bilateral, secured and unsecured. Simona has over ten years’ experience advising on a broad range of high-profile financings and projects throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

The Deal: In April 2019 CEE Legal Matters reported that Clifford Chance Badea had advised Alpha Bank Romania on its EUR 1 billion direct issuance global covered bond programme – the first-ever in Romania. RTPR Allen & Overy advised Barclays Bank PLC as arranger on the programme, which came three years after the country’s covered bond law entered into force.