“The focus in the country at the moment is on the constitutional amendments to change the name of the Republic of Macedonia,” says ODI Partner Gjorgji Georgievski.

Ever since “legal tech” became a thing, lawyers have been dreadfully anticipating the time when technology will disrupt the legal profession. The media has been fuelling lawyer worries, and attention-grabbing headlines like “The robot lawyers are here – and they are winning” or “Lawyers could be replaced by artificial intelligence” have kept lawyers awake at night. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in law has become the talk of the town, and for good reason, as the use of legal technology helps lawyers to get things done more efficiently and cost-effectively. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that legal tech start-ups are becoming the Starbucks of the legal profession – they are popping up on every corner. It is estimated that there are over 1000 legal tech start-ups worldwide and that the legal tech industry is worth USD 15.9 billion globally.

BDK Advokati and Kirkland & Ellis have advised BC Partners on its agreement to acquire a majority stake in United Group B.V. from KKR, which retains a substantial minority stake. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and the transaction is subject to relevant regulatory approvals.

October 30, 2018, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Belgrade

We are excited to announce that registration for the 2018 Balkan General Counsel Summit is now open. The event will take place in Belgrade’s Hyatt Regency Hotel on October 30, 2018.

The GDPR, which entered into force in the EU on May 25, 2018, will also have implications for Macedonia-based companies.

The winners of the 2017 CEE Deal of the Year Awards were announced at the first ever CEE Legal Matters Deal of the Year Awards Banquet last night in Prague. The biggest smiles in the joyous and music-filled celebration of CEE lawyering, perhaps, were on the faces of Partners from Avellum and Sayenko Kharenko, which, along with White & Case and Latham & Watkins, won the award both for Ukrainian Deal of the Year and CEE Deal of the Year for their work on the 2017 Ukraine Eurobond Issue (a story initially reported by CEE Legal Matters on October 2, 2017).

The western Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and the Republic of Macedonia share the desire to join the European Union. Two of these countries — Albania and Macedonia — are particularly close to accession. we spoke to several lawyers to learn more about how accession could affect the business landscape and the work of lawyers in the two countries.

Slovenia: Fine-Tuning of the Tax System

In the beginning of 2018, Slovenia introduced several minor and mainly administrative changes to its tax legislation, mostly addressing and resolving inconsistencies in the legislation that had been detected in practice. 

Macedonia has started the process of liberalizing and privatizing the energy market as an obligation deriving from the Treaty establishing the Energy Community signed on October 25, 2005 in Athens (the “Treaty”).

Tatjana Popovski Buloski, Partner at the Polenak Law Firm in Skopje, says the political crisis in Macedonia last year slowed capital movement and M&A transactions. “Everybody in the business community was watching closely what was going on in the political scene,” she reports.

Macedonia has started the process of liberalizing and privatizing the energy market as an obligation deriving from the Treaty establishing the Energy Community signed on October 25, 2005 in Athens (the “Treaty”).

Macedonia’s 2013 Law on Takeover of Joint Stock Companies provides a squeeze-out right enabling a majority shareholder who has acquired at least 95% of the shares of an eligible joint stock company on the basis of a takeover bid to require the minority shareholders to sell their securities at a fair consideration.

CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz has opened a new office in Skopje, giving the Vienna-based member of the international CMS network a total of ten branches.

The last decade of the previous millennium set the Republic of Macedonia on a new course, with EU & NATO integration a number one priority for the country in the Western Balkans. This new course meant that reforms in almost all areas of state management were inevitable.

On Thursday, November 30th, leading legal practitioners from across Central and Eastern Europe gathered in Prague to help CEE Legal Matters celebrate its fourth successful year as the leading chronicle of the legal industry in the region, participating in an expert Round Table conversation about the year just concluded and enjoying an evening of dinner, drinks, and bonhomie. 

Prior to initiating a civil court procedure, parties may try to solve a dispute through out of court negotiations. When these out of court negotiations are not successful or when the relevant statute of limitations is about to expire, in order to protect their rights, the parties can initiate a procedure in the competent court.

Macedonian lawyers cooperating with Karanovic & Nikolic have advised Central Asia Metals on its EUR 340 million acquisition of 100% of Lynx Resources, which operates the SASA zinc-lead mine in Macedonia, from Orion Co-investments III and Fusion Capital. The Georgi Dimitrov Law Firm reportedly advised the sellers.

The commercial legal markets of Central & Eastern Europe didn’t appear automatically. They didn’t develop in a vacuum. They were formed, shaped, and led, by lawyers – visionary, hard-working, commercially-minded, and client-focused individuals pulling the development of CEE’s legal markets along behind them as they labored relentlessly for their clients, their careers, their futures.