Francois d’Ornano, together with almost the entire Budapest office of Jeantet, has left the French firm to launch the D’Ornano Partners law firm, with offices in Hungary, Serbia, and Romania.
In addition to d’Ornano, the Founding Partners of D'Ornano include former Jeantet lawyers Amaury Chautard and Anna Maria Veres in Paris and Balazs Kutasi in Budapest, former Bondoc & Asociatii Senior Associate Cristina Gavrila in Bucharest, and Ana Maric in Belgrade. It is unclear what the affect of Maric's joining will have on her role as Managing Partner of Belgrade's MMD Associates law firm.
The Budapest team moved to Jeantet with d’Ornano from Gide Loyrette Nouel in 2015 (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on October 21, 2015, and on November 3, 2015). Maric and Gavrila also worked with d’Ornano with Gide, with d’Ornano overseeing the firm's Serbian and Romanian offices until Gide withdrew from those markets.
D’Ornano Partners also announced that a Brussels office, “will be set up in the following months and will cover competition and EU-related aspects related to cross-border investments of our clients in France and the CEE region.
Commenting on the departure of her colleagues, Jeantet Local Partner Ioana Knoll-Tudor told CEE Legal Matters that “Jeantet keeps a presence in Hungary and continues its development in the CEE/CIS region.” Indeed, while Knoll-Tudor was set to move to Paris (as reported on by CEE Legal Matters on September 20, 2017), she informed CEE Legal Matters that she will remain in the region to help develop the firm's presence in CEE in parallel to her efforts to strenghten its international arbitration practice.
Editorial Note: This article was corrected to reflect the fact that Francois d'Ornano had overseen the Gide Serbian and Romanian offices, not Cristina Gavrila as the article originally reported.
