Bojanovic & Partners has successfully represented football player Nemanja Nikolic in CAS arbitration between him and Israeli club Hapoel Tel Aviv. 

Kinstellar has advised EAG on its acquisition of Cebia. Simkova & Partneri advised the unnamed seller on the deal.

Rymarz Zdort has advised BIF IV Europe Holdings Limited, an affiliate of Brookfield Renewable Partners, on its unspecified investment in Polish renewable energy producer Polenergia S.A.

Brandl Talos has advised Btov Partners on its EUR 1 million investment in Vienna-based startup Visplore. Herbst Kinsky advised Visplore on the deal.

Orrick and Kondracki Celej have advised EPAM Systems Inc on its acquisition of Salesforce.Com’s cloud consulting partner, PolSource, to ramp up its growing Salesforce abilities and development into new markets. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Glodeanu & Partners, working with the Nivaro Law Firm, has advised Impero Software on the acquisition of Danish-based Netop, which has a strong presence in Romania through two of its subsidiaries, from Consolidated Holdings A/S.

Cobalt has advised venture capital fund Karma Ventures on its follow-on investment in Vilnius-based CGTrader, which was advised by Sorainen. Evli Growth Partners, Karma Ventures, and LVV Group participated in the round, in which CGTrader raised USD 9.5 million.

CMS has advised PFR Ventures on its investment in private equity funds British Apax Partners, French PAI Partners, and Poland-based Avallon MBO. The total value of the investment, which also included another, unnamed, company, is PLN 340 million.

Schoenherr has advised Germany's Osram GmbH on the sale of its Bulgarian business to the Sanmina Corporation. Hogan Lovells and Djingov, Gouginski, Kyutchukov & Velichkov advised Sanmina Corporation on the deal.

Ellex Raidla has advised SG Capital Partners Fund I on the acquisition of a 90,000 square meter logistics complex near the Plavinieki and Dreilini districts in Riga by acquiring shares in SIA Beinits and SIA Balt Cargo Solutions from a group of private investors. The sellers were reportedly advised by Rasa, Esenvalds, and Radzins. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Cobalt’s Estonian office has advised technology-oriented venture capital fund Earlybird Digital East Fund on its provision of EUR 1.5 million in seed funding into Binalyze, a provider of advanced digital forensics and incident response solutions.

Mitroi, Damian, Serbu & Associates and Ireland's Crowley Millar Solicitors have successfully represented Romanian airline Just-Us Air in arbitration with Air Moldova, the largest Moldovan airline.

Former Zeiler Floyd Zadkovich Partner Markus Schifferl has returned to BPV Huegel as Co-Head of Dispute Resolution.

Former Hogan Lovells Partner Rafal Grochowski has brought his team to Domanski Zakrzewski Palinka.

Former Mriya Agroholding Chief Legal Counsel Sergiy Ignatovsky has joined Redcliffe Partners as a Partner within the firm’s Litigation and Restructuring practices.

Former CMS Partner and Head of Finance Mark Segall has joined Dentons's Banking and Finance team in Warsaw.

Longtime CMS Local Partner Maria Orlyk has succeeded Johannes Trenkwalder as Managing Partner of CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainze's Kyiv office.

Former White & Case lawyer Simona Rapava has joined Slovakia's MCL Law Firm as Co-Head of Banking and Finance.

Polish lawyers Michal Bochowicz, Adam Kraszewski, and Karol Sokol have been promoted to Partner at Gessel.

In January 2021, Hungarian lawyer Gergely Juhasz launched Risque Finance Brokers – an independent financial services start-up offering risk management consulting services for the M&A sector.

Otilia Vilcu has become Partner at GNP Guia Naghi and Partners.

Former Zuric i Partneri lawyer Luka Vukelic has opened the Vukelic Law Office in Zagreb.

Former Kinstellar lawyers Selma Mujezinovic and Ksenija Sorajic Bakovic have left the firm to establish KSEL Advokati in Belgrade, Serbia. The founders will be supported by former Kinstellar colleague Una Draganic Vukovic.

Former Karanovic & Partners attorneys Luka Prelevic, Stefan Lucic, and Djordje Kuzmanovic have opened PLK Advokati for business in Podgorica.

Law on Determining the Origin of Property and the Special Tax, the law which attracts a lot of public attention for two reasons, begins to apply on 12 March. General public attention is attracted given that this law was announced from time to time by various political parties which were in power during the last 20 years, while attention of competent public is attracted given the solutions provided for in the law.

Emergency Government Ordinance (EGO) no. 13 dated 24 February 2021, which amends Law 227/2015 regarding the Fiscal Code and Accounting Law no. 82/1991, was published in the Romanian Official Gazette, issue no. 0197 dated 26 February 2021.

The Office for Personal Data Protection has released an inspection plan for the year 2020, which announces that this year they aim at intensively focusing on cookie use and plan to start 8 inspections at once that are intended to check cookie use. Yet, cookies are also the subject of interest for some other inspection offices that have made numerous statements about the use of cookies. While in the rest of the EU, users’ consent is required before storing cookies (the opt-in principle), according to the current Czech legislation embedded in Act N. 127/2005 Coll., on Electronic Communications, cookies can be used until the user says something (opt-out principle).

Back in September 2020, the Serbian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “Commission”), following an internal review of the market dynamics and dawn raids at key players, initiated a formal investigation against three major undertakings active in both wholesale and retail of consumer electronics – Roaming Electronics d.o.o., Tehnomanija d.o.o. and Comtrade Distribution d.o.o. The Commission had, per publicly available pricing information and upon review of comparative practice, cited concerns that the undertakings involved were acting in concert, as well by potentially enforcing a resale price maintenance policy.

The consequences of the pandemic are also leaving their mark on Ukraine. Ukraine’s GDP declined by 4.6% in 2020, compared to expected growth of 3.7% before the pandemic. However, unemployment has (officially) only risen from 9.0% to 9.9%, which may be related to the fact that a large proportion of the workers affected by redundancies were in the informal sector, i.e. not officially employed.

Why is a whistleblowing system necessary and how can it help you save your good reputation, organization, investments, and even your freedom?

After simplifying the procedure for VAT registration in 2020 (i.e. risk analysis by the taxpayer after VAT registration instead of on the submission date of application for VAT registration), the Romanian tax authorities approved another simplification of the VAT registration procedure at the beginning of this week.

Under the Croatian law, a foundation is a non-profit legal entity without any members, which includes assets permanently intended to serve a generally useful or charitable purpose on its own or through income it generates.

How the Covid-19 Pandemic and Technological Innovations affect the insurance and M&A Market. As we are all aware, the last year was challenging for almost all industries, including the insurance companies, which were inevitably affected by both COVID-19 pandemic and technological innovations, and now must face the forthcoming risks and challenges.

Current Law on Health Insurance (Official Gazette of RS no. 25/2019) has been applied since 11 April 2019. The Government of the Republic of Serbia prepared the amendments to this law which are currently in public debate, after which they will enter parliamentary procedure. The draft law stipulates several significant novelties that we will present in this article. If it is adopted, the application of the draft law amending the Law on Health Insurance (“the Law”) will start on 1 June 2021.

In the Czech Republic, persons who undergo Covid-19 vaccination have been given the opportunity to claim financial compensation from the state if the vaccination (or, more precisely, the medicinal product containing a vaccine) causes harm. The Czech Parliament adopted Act No. 569/2020 Sb., on the Distribution of Medicinal Products Containing a Vaccine for Covid-19 Vaccination and on Compensation for Harm Caused to Those Vaccinated by These Medicinal Products (“Act No. 569/2020 Sb.”), which allows such compensation. According to the explanatory memorandum, this measure aims to “facilitate compensation of those who get vaccinated if they are harmed by the vaccination, thereby also indirectly promoting interest in Covid-19 vaccination.”

The phenomenon of tax evasion is present all around the globe regardless of whether we look at “civilized” or developing countries, being one of the most widespread and notorious form of financial crimes, responsible for a significant part of the shadow economy.