CHSH Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati has rebranded as Cerha Hempel.

Biris Goran has promoted Corporate/M&A lawyer Teodora Motatu to Partner.

Things continue apace in Romania, according to Schoenherr Partner Matei Florea. "It’s not slow, let me put it like this,” he says. "It’s the current new normal, with very diverse projects running at very diverse speeds. We’ve had it for a couple of years and it's professionally both challenging and satisfying.”

CEE Attorneys/Boanta, Gidei si Asociatii has advised Austria's Simacek group on the consolidation of the facility management activities of its Romanian entities Simacek Cleaning and Simacek Gardening into one Group company — Simacek Facility Services. Simacek Gardening and Simacek Cleaning retained other, non-facility management-related business activities.

Stratulat Albulescu has advised London Partners on its acquisition of a 29,000 square meter plot in the Expozitiei area of Bucharest.

It has been over a year since the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation became mandatory across Europe, marking a seismic shift in the way that companies collect, process, and handle personal data. Countries across the European Union and beyond have adapted their national laws to meet the requirements of the GDPR – with many introducing local derogations as permitted by the GDPR.

A review of the Romanian pharma market reveals the real challenges faced by pharmaceutical companies and the impact of those challenges on patients.

The Romanian office of CEE Attorneys has advised the sellers on the final stage of the sale of the 7Card business to the French group Sodexo.

Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen has successfully defended the interests of the Baylor Black Sea Foundation before the Court of Appeals in Romania in relation to a dispute with the fiscal authorities.

Filip & Company has advised Romania's Ministry of Public Finance on its issuance of EUR 2 billion in bonds.

Over 77% of the European Union’s territory is classified as rural (47% is agricultural land and 30% is forest). The numbers are little different in Romania, where around 81% of the territory is rural (approximately 50% is agricultural land and over 31% is forest cover).

Tuca Zbarcea & Asociatii has advised Fadi Rida and Mihai Stanescu, founders of the Global Technical Group, on their sale of a majority stake in the group to private equity fund manager Abris Capital Partners. Clifford Chance Badea advised Abris Capital Partners on the deal.

The Republic of Moldova has three and a half million people – two and a half million fewer than when it was part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet bar was strictly a criminal/civil/family bar, with lawyers doing international legal work concentrated mainly in Moscow. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, local bars (such as Moldova’s) were forced to develop legal capabilities from scratch to serve the needs of local businesses and foreign investors.

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.

At the European Community level there have been numerous regulations related to asset freezing and confiscation, the most recent being Directive 2014/42/EU of the European Parliament and of The Council on the freezing and confiscation of instrumentalities and proceeds of crime in the European Union (the “Directive”).

The Romanian personal identification number (“cod numeric personal” in the Romanian language) is a unique and general identifier that is assigned to each individual at birth and appears on most personal documents, including birth certificates and identity cards. The number remains unchanged throughout an individual’s life.

State aid has always been a success story in Romania, with a lot of companies developing medium-sized investment projects based on money coming from Romanian authorities. And the success story continued through 2018 and into 2019. But let’s look at this story from the beginning.