Hot Practice: Ileana Glodeanu on Wolf Theiss’s Corporate/M&A Practice

Hot Practice: Ileana Glodeanu on Wolf Theiss’s Corporate/M&A Practice

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Despite the pandemic raging all over Europe, Ileana Glodeanu, Partner in the Corporate/M&A practice of Wolf Theiss in Bucharest, reports that her team has been “the busiest of our practices this year,” noting that “over half” of the office’s lawyers are currently involved in Corporate/M&A projects. 

Glodeanu points to a currently confidential deal she's working on involving a “PE fund completing a transaction in a consumer-orientated field,” and which she says will be “among the top three in Romania this year, by value.” The due diligence process, she says, which started in February, was halted by the pandemic in March, when the firm’s client began “reassessing their position, only to continue in September with a deadline for signing in October!”

Glodeanu says that “due diligence processes, transactional negotiations, acquisition financings, and all work related to corporate, really,” composes the brunt of her team’s work. 

“There are several factors that serve as drivers behind us having a lot of work,” Glodeanu says. “Last year, we advised Blackstone Tactical Opportunities on a EUR 175 million acquisition of a minority stake in Superbet – along with other matters, this positioned us well for future PE work.”  

Indeed, she emphasizes the “importance of referrals and recommendations” arising from successful client service in the past. She points as an example to Wolf Theiss’s advising Ingka Investments on the acquisition of a 171MW power plant portfolio from Vestas Wind Systems – a staggered transaction that started in 2019 and was completed as a full acquisition in 2020. “Deals like this spread the word of our work and it just grows from there – that’s how we’ve gotten to work on a pool of renewables transactions. Similarly, it was our sell-side expertise that brought us the over EUR 150 million sale of Adeplast to the Sika group that closed this March.” 

Glodeanu says that recommendations and referrals span across industrial sectors and “include technology, energy, medical, transport transactions – you name it, it’s been very varied this year!” 

Finally, Glodeanu says that a lot of the work Wolf Theiss’s Corporate/M&A practice has been seeing this year has to do with large multinational corporations. “MNCs have been doing a lot of group restructurings this year – spin-offs, asset transfers, divestments, joint ventures – and a lot of it has come our way,” she says.

Ultimately, Glodeanu is confident that the workload will remain stable for the foreseeable future. “Usually, this time of the year is a swamped period for M&A transactions, with everybody wanting to close before the end of the year,” she says. “So we’re cautiously optimistic in hoping we can continue our high level of activity in this arena.”