The Legal 500

Since the commencement of transition process in Serbia and inflow of foreign investments, labor law has been characterized by the foreign investors as one of the main obstacles for such investments, together with the inefficient state administration, unsettled ownership status of real estate, political instability and related risks of investment etc.

In the event of a public offer of securities, in order for the securities to be offered legally to investors, a prospectus must be prepared, approved by the competent authority and published. However, Article 4 of the EU Prospectus Directive (2003/71/EC) contains certain exemptions from the obligation to publish a prospectus. For several recent mergers in Austria(1) questions have arisen as to whether they constituted public offers of shares in the transferee companies and, thus, whether prospectuses should have been published.

Five years after enacting EU-like Competition Law, the Serbian Goverment has enacted block exemption regulations for vertical and horizontal agreements. The regulations became effective on 13 March 2010 and companies have been given theree months to comply.

Serbian Parliament passed the new Competition Law earlier this month but voted to put it into effect as of 1 November. Most notably, for procedures commencingas of November, the Commission will impose fines and other sanctions directly, up to 10% of the parties’ revenues. The new law completely remodels all procedures before the Commission. The revision did little to change the substantive approach to competition rules thus keeping the law essentially compliant with EU rules.