CORPORATE LAW
Our company is involved in setting up companies and advising on buying and selling businesses. We also advise on amendments and implications of articles of association; shareholders agreements and directors’ responsibilities. We prepare shareholders agreements by reviewing and considering the articles of association to ensure that shareholders’ interests are properly protected.
In particular, we are often asked to protect the interests of minority shareholders – this involves a consideration of companies’ constitutions and the rights granted in conjunction with the Romanian Companies law. The value of preparing detailed shareholders agreements is realised when shareholders are in dispute. The scope of the dispute is generally restricted by the terms of the agreement.
Our company solicitors assist businesses in purchasing other businesses. Our solicitors have acted on quite a number of multi-million euro acquisitions and disposals, restructures and demergers.
We have provided company legal advice in respect to:
● Mergers and Acquisitions
● Purchase and sale of companies
● Setting up joint venture entities and group company structures
● Management buy-outs
● Due diligence
● Assisting in formulating franchise arrangements and structures
● Structuring private companies to manage liability and risk
● Buying and selling businesses
● Securing property interests
REAL ESTATE
We have the expertise to provide a complete range of legal services for all kinds of property asset.
Key areas of our practice include property development, investment work, landlord and tenant, financing, environmental and retail. Our clients include developers, funds, investors and retailers.
The team regularly advises on high value and complex transactions. These include retail, commercial and residential estates, financing and joint ventures. Our team works closely together and integrates with other parts of our firm to ensure a high standard of delivery on all your deals.
We are driven by an understanding of your business and provide services tailor-made to meet your commercial objectives.
COMMERCIAL LITIGATION
Commercial litigation is our main domain of expertise. We have a well-established practice covering a wide range of commercial disputes. A key advantage ofusis that we combine commercial litigation expertise with knowledge and experience in one or more areas of law, in particular company, banking, insolvency, real estate, IP and IT. As many disputes often involve more than one practice area, this multi-disciplinary expertise is of real benefit to our clients.
We are specialised in cases related to debts recovery, matters related to promissory notes, cheques and also partnership issues.
We are capable of assimilating the information in a short time and to provide a stategy adapted to each case.
TAX
Our experience includes matters related to the application of the convention of avoiding the double taxation, income tax, profit tax, property taxes, value added tax.
INFORMATION TEHNOLOGY
We have significant experience in the field of information technology. Advice and litigation in relation to large-scale IT disputes remains a significant and prominent part of our practice. For example, our barristers acted for EDS in their dispute with NATS which was at that time described by Computer Weekly as the largest UK IT trial in English legal history. In addition The Lawyer featured this case in their “heavyweight litigation” report as one of the 10 big litigation trials of 2008.
It is not all about multi-million pound disputes though. We also have extensive experience of supplier and customer software/hardware disputes at both County Court and High Court level.
Our familiarity with ADR procedures such as mediation, ENE and arbitration also benefits our IT clients.
Our members dealing with IT disputes have expertise in other areas such as IP and/or fraud, including telecoms fraud, regulatory issues, data protection, domain name disputes and confidential information. This multi-disciplinary expertise adds to our ability of dealing with complex cases.
LABOUR LAW
Our experience in labour law matters enables us to assist in:
the conclusion of labour law contracts;
● confidentiality and non-competition clauses;
● disciplinary procedures;
● dismissal procedures;
● copyrights derived from labour relations;
● discrimination;
● collective labour contracts.
BANKRUPTCY
We are familiar with assisting clients both creditors and debtors, in insolvency proceedings. We are able to provide restructuring strategies and to draft reorganization plans. We have the capacity to forecast the possibility of debts collection by the creditors.
A specific domain of expertise in which we are constantly assisting clients is that of the persons (administrators, directors, auditors) of the bankrupt companies in claims regarding their personal liability.
COPYRIGHT
We are providing legal services related to the protection and the transmission of copyright, collective copyright and neighboring rights administration bodies, protection of computer programs and computer data basis.
We have long established expertise in all types of intellectual property law work. The range of work undertaken covers copyright, design right, trademarks and patents as well as breach of confidence and privacy. We have a particular experience in media and music industry cases and practice. We have been involved in numerous high profile reported cases involving intellectual property, database rights, logo protection, design right infringement and sound recording royalties.
Our multi-disciplinary expertise whereby commercial litigators effectively combine excellent IP knowledge with an expertise in company and contract matters is undoubtedly a huge benefit for our IP clients.
COMPETITION
In order to minimize the risk of breaching competition rules and potentially being the subject of a competition law investigation or private litigation, companies should be aware of the competition and regulatory rules applying to their business practices and strategies.
Compliance programmes provide senior managers with the confidence that all staff understand and comply with the rules. We work to ensure our clients’ business practices and strategies are compliant with competition rules. This includes:
● reviewing business strategy and key agreements;
● advice on abuse of dominance and monopolies issues;
● advice on licensing, distribution, exclusivity, non-compete provisions and parallel imports, including the application of block exemption regulations; and
● competition compliance and dawn raid training.
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
A core part of our practice is advising on the sale and purchase of businesses and we have acted for clients across a range of industry sectors. Whether acting for the vendor or the purchaser we are able to advise and represent the client through the initial planning stage, due diligence, contract negotiation and completion. Our experience includes the purchase of businesses or assets from Liquidators. We can also advise on the relative merits and demerits of entering into a business sale as opposed to a share sale.