CEE Legal Matters Deal of the Year Award Details

Explanation and Methodology

Only deals that are formally submitted will be considered, and all submissions must be received by CEE Legal Matters on or before January 10, 2025. Submissions received by November 22, 2024, will receive feedback as to whether there is anything wrong with the submission so that they can be corrected. Those received after November 22 will only receive a confirmation receipt but will be simply discarded if they do not follow the guidelines. 

Yes, there might be critical deals closed past November 22. If a firm exceeds the number of submissions allocated, we will reach out at the end of the year to any firms that have submitted more than that and ask them to pick which three of the submitted deals they'd like to put forward. Because of that, we encourage you to pick your top three deals and submit those before November 22, and should others come up, you can swap them out before January 10, 2025.

As always, the editors and staff of CEE Legal Matters play no role in the evaluation of submissions or the selection of winners. Instead, submissions are exclusively evaluated by two panels of prominent lawyers from across the region – with members of the second and final panel forbidden from voting in markets where their firms are among the finalists.

Those submissions that satisfy the mandatory criteria will be automatically forwarded to our Shortlist Panels, consisting of senior partners at leading firms and/or highly experienced and respected General Counsel in each CEE jurisdiction who have agreed to rank the submissions for complexity, size, and market significance. Their votes will be tabulated, and the resulting shortlists for each market in which a minimum of three deals were submitted will be announced on January 27, 2025. 

The shortlisted submissions will then be forwarded to the Final Selection Committee, consisting of CEELM Knowledge Partners and select other legal experts from across the region, who will review and rank the finalists, leading to the final determination of the winner for each market.

Previous Years’ Awards

The CEE Deals of the Year Awards, recognizing the largest and most important deals in Central and Eastern Europe, were launched in 2017, with winners of the first DOTYs announced at the June 6, 2018, Deal of the Year Awards Banquet in Prague, and winners of the 2018 DOTYs announced at the March 28, 2019 Banquet in Budapest. The Covid-19 crisis forced the cancellation of two Deal of the Year Banquets, so winners of the 2019 awards were announced in the May, 2020 issue of the CEE Legal Matters magazine (here), and the 2020 awards were announced in the August, 2022 issue (here). The 2021 awards were announced at the 2022 Deal of the Year Awards Banquet in London and the winners are listed in the special June 2022 issue here. The 2022 awards were announced in April 2023 at an awards gala held in conjunction with the CEE General Counsel Summit and the winners are listed in the special June 2023 issue of the magazine here. In fact, all past winners are aggregated on the DOTY website here (the 2024 winners will be included as a separate entry soon).

Submitting Deals: 

Submissions must be made using this online form on or before January 10, 2025. Please Note: Submissions received after that date, or not submitted using the online form will not be considered. There is NO flexibility on deadline extensions – please do not write to ask. 

Important Updates from previous DOTYs: 

1. As of this year, we’re asking for client contact details. Those will purely be used for data validation purposes and are not shared with the voting ballots for consideration.
2. Starting with 2023, we've introduced a rolling system of CEE Deal of the Year submissions to help firms avoid the stress of end-of-the-year deadlines. The cap of three submissions per firm per jurisdiction remains, so we will reach out at the end of the year to any firms that have submitted more than that and ask them to pick which three of the submitted deals they'd like to put forward. 
3. As opposed to previous years, since 2023, eligibility of deals is determined based on the date of closing, not of signing. Only deals that were closed between January 1 and December 31, 2024, will be considered, without exception. Because of this change, some deals that were submitted for previous editions of the DOTYs might be eligible this year because of their closing, rather than signing date but deals that won a previous edition of the DOTYs are NOT eligible again for the jurisdiction(s) for which it was awarded the DOTY in the past. 

Important Note - No Confidential Information or Confidential Deals:

Please only submit information that is publicly disclosable. The information provided will be shared with the jurors so every bit of information included in your submissions will be considered as publishable, regardless of how it is marked. 

Important Notes - On Counter-Parties:

It is mandatory to identify other law firms advising on a submitted deal. Thus:

• If you represented a buyer on a transaction, you *must* identify the advisor of the seller, and vice-versa (e.g., “X advised the seller”)
• If you represented a borrower on a financing, you *must* identify the advisor of the lender, and vice-versa (e.g., “X advised the lender”)
• If you advised on local matters only on a larger regional or global deal, you *must* identify the firms acting as global advisors, and vice-versa (e.g., “A acted as the global counsel for party B; C acted as the global counsel for party D”)
• If the counter-party relied strictly on its in-house team please note that (e.g., “X relied on its in-house team”)

Important Notes - On Submission Requirements:

• Clients must be identified by name
• Deals need to be closed between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024.
• Disputes do not qualify for the Deal of the Year awards.

2025 Deals of the Year Awards Banquet

The 2024 CEE Deals of the Year Award winners will be announced at the 2025 CEE Deals of the Year Awards Banquet, scheduled in conjunction with the 2025 CEE General Counsel Summit, due to take place in Prague in Spring 2025. Further details are to be announced on January 10, 2025.