According to Arzinger Managing Partner Timur Bondaryev, competition investigations, investment disputes, and white-collar crime matters have been keeping his team particularly busy these last few months. CEE Legal Matters sat down with him to learn more about the driving forces behind these areas in Ukraine.

While mineral extraction in Ukraine has a high potential for development and attracting investment, it always entails ecological risks which must be properly mitigated. Recently adopted laws, as well as legislation currently considered by Parliament, are aimed at balancing economic development and environmental protection.

Like the rest of the world, the Ukrainian M&A market was dramatically hit by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Indeed, the number of M&A deals decreased in 2020, for the first time since 2014. However, the fourth quarter of 2020 saw a positive surge in the number of M&A deals, and although most of those deals started before the pandemic, the fact that they still happened sent a clear signal: investors are ready to buy in the new reality.

The Ukrainian legal services market has been buzzing with work in the first half of 2021. CEE Legal Matters hosted a round table conversation in which Partners at Asters, Avellum, Integrites, Kinstellar, and Sayenko Kharenko discussed the driving forces behind the workload and their outlook for the months to come.

The pandemic has been devastating for Ukraine, with underfunded health services struggling to contain COVID-19 contagion. Scenes of hospitals overwhelmed with patients and lacking staff, equipment, and medication will haunt us even as cases drop and vaccinations rise. It has been a traumatic time for our team at the Kyiv Dentons office. We have been working hard to support and guide each other towards the glimmer of light at the end of this long and, at times scary, tunnel.

CEE Legal Matters sat down with Go2 Law owner Hugh Owen to talk about career choices, training others, and his newest project, Go2 Law Training.

Few global industries have been as strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as the hotel industry. All over the world, chains and bespoke hoteliers have had to face the impact of travel restrictions on bookings, in most cases leading to dire falls in occupancy rates and, subsequently, income. Now that the pandemic has been wreaking havoc for over a year, how is the hotel industry in CEE coping, and what options do hoteliers have? We spoke with three CMS Partners – Ana Radnev, Gregor Famira, and Lukas Hejduk – to get their opinions on the current situation and outlook on the future of the sector.

Doru Toma, Project Manager of Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Leaders for Justice program, provides insight into the program’s values, goals, and structure.

Regional periodical league tables ranking M&A activity through the lens of the law firms advising on the deals are often dominated by Baltic law firms, with the CEELM Index special issue of the CEE Legal Matters magazine reflecting the same trend. To better understand why that is so, we spoke with several Partners – from both Baltic firms and other CEE jurisdictions.

Over the years, all countries in the CEE region have drawn best-practice models from the West, particularly in legal, economic, and business terms. In a number of CEE countries, offices of international law firms opened in response to the needs of their global clients and market opportunities. These firms played a significant role and introduced their know-how to the legal market. Parallel to this, strong local players emerged in each of these countries, changing the competitive environment and challenging the international ones. Over the last few years, you can see a revision of the need to maintain a presence in the region by some international law firms, most notably Magic Circle and White Shoe firms.