The Legal 500

Work Department

Competition; Intellectual Property.

Position

Raluca Vasilache is a competition partner with Ţuca Zbârcea & Asociaţii and head of the firm`s practice in this area. She has covered a wide array of legal issues in the field of competition law, as well as intellectual property. Praised for her work on merger control, antitrust and State aid cases she has undertaken numerous procedures of reviewing mergers and acquisitions under antitrust and competition law, acting for multinational clients from various sectors, such as oil, steel, pharma, telecommunications, consumer goods retail, electricity. She has also advised in relation to investigations with the Romanian Competition Council, dawn raids of the authority and State aid matters, as well as on litigation involving competition law issues. Furthermore, she has wide experience with privatization and post-privatization matters of major State-owned enterprises, especially on the merger and State aid issues. Her intellectual property experience includes assistance on various matters, such as consumer protection and anti-counterfeiting, unfair competition, trademark and copyright regulatory issues.

Career

Over the past 11 years, Raluca Vasilache has acquired extensive experience in competition matters relating to national and international transactions, having assisted various investors in front of the Competition Council in relation to merger and antitrust clearances, investigations, dawn raids and State aid matters. She coordinated the legal teams retained in the procedure of obtaining the clearance from the antitrust regulatory authority in Romania in relation to merger/acquisition of important companies: Interbrands Marketing & Distribution acquisition of Wella Romania, the local subsidiary of Procter & Gamble; GED Capital Development acquisitions of various local travel businesses; FrieslandCampina sale of its ice-cream business to Unilever; Sensiblu acquisition of Farmaplanet chain of pharmacies; Mittal Steel Company acquisition of the majority stake in Krivorizhsky Ore Mining Company and Steel Works “Kryvorizhstal”; the merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies, Inc.; the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta by Cisco Systems. She has been directly involved in some of the most important projects taking place on the Romanian market, including the following ones: coordinator of the competition team advising Hidroelectrica on all competition related issues pertaining to the implementation of the largest corporate restructuring in the energy sector in Romania; coordinator of the team of lawyers assisting ING Pension Fund with respect to the statement of objections issued by the Romanian Competition Council after the 3-year investigation concerning a potential cartel between certain pension funds with respect to (i) price fixing and (ii) market/clientele sharing; coordinator of the team of lawyers assisting BCR Pension Fund with respect to the statement of objections issued by the Romanian Competition Council after the 3-year investigation concerning a potential cartel between certain pension funds with respect to a market/clientele sharing; lead legal advisor retained by Colgate – Palmolive Romania during the investigation launched by the Competition Council in relation to the company’s potential abuse of a dominant position, as well as lead legal advisor during the investigation and hearings related to the potential participation to a distributors` cartel and abuse of dominant position; lead legal advisor to ArcelorMittal in connection with the State aid investigation opened by the European Commission on potential State aid initiatives received by the company within the context of its privatization in 2003; coordinator of the legal team advising Carrefour on the clearance for the acquisition of Artima chain of supermarkets; lead legal advisor retained by UPC regarding the accusation of potential cartel participation and abuse of dominant position, including assistance in the preparation of the arguments and hearings before the Romanian Competition Council and in subsequent court proceedings for challenging the decision of the Competition Council. Raluca Vasilache is a regular lecturer at various local and international conferences on competition, State aid and intellectual property matters. She is also the local correspondent for Global Competition Review and has contributed numerous articles in leading local and international publications.

Languages

English; French.

Member

Bucharest Bar Association.

Education

University of Bucharest (LL.B., 1999).