SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan (SyCipLaw) was recognized as the Philippines Firm of the Year at the Asialaw Asia-Pacific Legal Practice Awards 2017. SyCipLaw partner Leslie C. Dy received the award on the firm’s behalf.

If an employer seriously intends to close an establishment then it can issue notices of dismissal due to operational circumstances, i.e. notices of compulsory or forced redundancy. That was the verdict of the Landesarbeitsgericht (LAG) Rheinland-Pfalz [Regional Labour Court of Rhineland-Palatinate] (Az.: 5 Sa 51/16).

Missing or incorrect mandatory information in relation to real estate mortgages that have been taken out since June 11, 2010 means that loan withdrawal is still a possibility.

20 December, 2017

The renewable energy company OX2 has been awarded the contract to construct the 357 MW Valhalla wind power farm with 85 wind power plants in Sweden. It will be one of the largest land-based wind power farms in Europe. The customer for the project is Aquila Capital.

Stelios Americanos & Co LLC advised Athienitis Group over €100 million debt restructuring

The high profile transaction was one of the most complex restructuring in Cyprus as involved bank debt, bond holders issues and related litigation, financing provided by the Cyta Provident Fund, minority shareholder considerations and the construction and management of the Nicosia Mall a project with a construction cost of over €uro100million.

7 November, 2017 

Walerud Ventures, together with Almi Invest, recently invested SEK 7.5 million in Ekkono Solutions.

Ekkono Solutions' business involves "machine learning" and linked objects, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT), with a focus on the manufacturing industry. Ekkono's solutions allow IoT products to learn and adapt, which results in production optimisation and minimisation of manual monitoring/service. 

The Law firm of Stelios Americanos & Co LLC, with pleasure announces the appointment as new Partners / Directors:

M&A transactions were heading for a record high in Germany last year. German firms were a popular target among foreign investors interested in corporate takeovers.

Once again, The Cyprus Fiduciary Association (CFA) selected our law firm to present another specialised and highly demanded seminar, the “Advanced Directors’ Workshop”, which took place on 30th November and 1st December 2017 in Nicosia and Limassol respectively.

VEGAS LEX held in Moscow a workshop on the matters related to the trends and problems of practical application of bankruptcy legislation for employees of Inter RAO Group.

The latest results from leading legal directories The Legal 500 Asia Pacific and Chambers Asia Pacific confirm Bell Gully’s leading position in the New Zealand legal market.

19 October, 2017

Foyen is the proud co-author of the global legal guide to mining, Getting the Deal Through – Mining 2017. The guide provides a quick overview of mining legislation in 28 countries.

Getting the Deal Through is a publication covering 75 business areas and containing information and analysis related to more than 150 jurisdictions. Many of the world’s leading lawyers and law firms have cooperated on Getting the Deal Through with the aim of compiling a unique information resource. The various sections in the publications have been authored by experts within the relevant subject area and jurisdiction.

12 December, 2017

Foyen continues to grow and, on the path to our goal of becoming Sweden’s largest business law firm in project and technology-related law, Foyen has named three new partners. Christoffer Löfquist, Oscar Wackling and Richard Sahlberg who will become partners of the firm beginning on 1 January 2018.

15 December, 2017

Foyen has assisted Pegital in the acquisition of the services company, IT-Hantverkarna. Through the acquisition, Pegital expands its business operations to cover IT services for small and midsize companies. Pegital owns the accounting firm Fortner, the home services company HomeMaid, and Veteranpoolen. All of the just over 80 employees of IT-Hantverkarna will join Pegital.

On 14 December 2017, Anastasia Cheredova, associate of VEGAS LEX Commercial group, spoke at the Fifth All-Russian Congress “Pharmaceutical activity in Russia and in EEU: Winter 2017 statutory regulation” organised by the Agency for Social and Economic Development with support of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation and other ministries and industry-specific agencies.

VEGAS LEX, with participation of the development company GVA Sawyer and with support of the Russian Managers and Developers Guild, in Moscow, held a seminar that is dedicated to selection of a general contractor and structuring of relations with it for the purpose of minimization of risks and losses when implementing development projects.

There were published the results of the annual ranking “Pravo.ru-300” according to which VEGAS LEX became a leader in the areas of Commercial Real Estate / Construction and PPP and gained recognition in other areas of law.

If an employee violates obligations set forth in his employment contract, he may then be issued with notice of dismissal on grounds of conduct. That being said, the notice needs to well prepared if it is to be effective.

On 30 November 2017, AON Schweiz AG, a leading global service provider for risk management, insurance and reinsurance brokers as well as adviser on human resources, has acquired 100% of the shareholding in Unidelta AG, an all-branch insurance broker based in Rapperswil, Switzerland. Unidelta is specialized in risk management and has particular designed services in personal injury management.

OTS Solicitors is proud to announce we have been awarded the Acquisition International (AI) Excellence Award for the Most Trusted [immigration] Lawyers 2017.

AI is a monthly magazine dedicated to providing information to the corporate world.  It has a circulation of 108,000 people in over 170 countries and regularly attracts editorial submissions from large corporate players, including KPMG, EY, PwC and Deloitte.

VEGAS LEX discusses the recovery of damages when considering the cases over insurance in the court Victor Petrov, Head of Litigation practice, told about the practice of consideration of disputes arising from insurance agreements and the ways of recovery of damages in these disputes at a round-table meeting on the topic “Insurance disputes and claims settlement: experience, trends and current practice”.

OTS Solicitors has been ranked highly by the Legal 500, and we have won numerous other awards for our immigration services (including a Global Excellence Award for the Most Trusted in Immigration Law).  OTS recently had an extraordinary success with an Adult Dependent Relative Visa being granted for the elderly relatives of a client.

On 28 November 2017, Multilease AG closed its second Swiss auto lease securitization transaction involving the issuance by First Swiss Mobility 2017-2 AG (the Issuer) of CHF 267,300,000 Zero percent asset-backed Class A Notes, due in 2027, CHF 16,500,000 1.00 percent asset-backed Class B Notes, due in 2027 and CHF 14,800,000 2.00 percent asset-backed Class C Notes, due in 2027.

GetYourGuide, the leading online marketplace for travel activities, announced a USD 75 million series D financing round led by Battery Ventures. The company’s existing investors KKR, Spark Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Nokia Growth and Sunstone Capital joined Battery in its investment.

The attorneys of VEGAS LEX Commercial group together with Pravo.ru held a webinar regarding the problems of revealing and proving various types of anticompetitive agreements.

The owners of AWK Group AG sold the company to Deutsche Private Equity GmbH, an independent German investment company. AWK Group is one of the largest independent Swiss consulting firms for information technology and digitalization.

If an inheritance is not rejected within a period of six weeks then it is deemed to have been accepted. Notwithstanding this, it may still be possible to contest the acceptance of the inheritance.

Hungary's OTP Bank bought Vojvođanska Banka, as well as NGB Leasing and the National Bank of Greece's corporate loan portfolio in Serbia. This is one of the biggest recent banking transactions in the region and it was closed on Friday, the 1st of December in Belgrade. Karanović & Nikolić advised the buyer – OTP Bank, one of the leading banks in Central and Eastern Europe, throughout all of the stages of the acquisition process.

On 29 November 2017, a meeting of the RSPP Committee for promotion of competition, involving the representatives of FAS Russia and VEGAS LEX, was held in order to discuss the antimonopoly service’s initiatives in the area of IT, protection of competition, procurements, administrative and criminal law and tariff regulation.

On 28 November 2017, the VEGAS LEX law firm held a breakfast meeting, at which the mechanisms and prospects of the “non-competition” agreements, which ensure preserving of a status quo upon withdrawal of partners from business and which are focused on the companies’ protection against “leakage” of trade secrets (know-how), disclosure of confidential information and “solicitation” of the company’s key personnel by competitors, were discussed.

Maxim Grigoryev, VEGAS LEX Partner and Head of special projects, spoke at the fourteenth joint meeting of the Russian-Japanese and Japanese-Russian committees for economic cooperation on the topic of efficient use of special investment contracts (SICs) for the creation and development of production in Russia.

In its November 2017 cover story on the 2017 Asia Top 50, ALB lists SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan as the largest law firm in the Philippines. ALB’s Asia Top 50 is an annual list of Asia’s largest law firms by headcount.

Karanović & Nikolić hosted the "Empowering Students to Enter the Workplace" HR conference, held on the 30th of November in Belgrade, Serbia. The event was organised in cooperation with Stanton Chase, one of the top 10 global retained executive search firms, and the guests and panellists included leading professionals in the field of human resources, as well as employment law experts.

Kim & Chang has consolidated its position as the leading law firm in Korea ranking “Tier 1” across all six practice areas in the 2018 edition of IFLR1000 Financial & Corporate.  We are the only Korean firm to receive top tier rankings in all categories for 14 consecutive years. 

In addition, IFLR named nine Kim & Chang attorneys as "Highly Regarded," two as "Market Leader," and one attorney as a "Rising Star."  According to IFLR, our firm "dominates the market and is routinely involved in the best mandates available across all practice areas."  

For the fourth year in a row, Kim & Chang is the only ranked law firm in Korea among the world’s largest law firms in the American Lawyer's “The Global 100" report.  

At the China Law & Practice Awards 2017, Kim & Chang won "South Korea Firm of the Year.”  This is the seventh consecutive year that our firm’s China Practice has received such recognition.  Further, we are the only Korean firm to be so named.   

On September 28, at the prestigious third annual Asialaw Asia-Pacific Dispute Resolution Awards 2017, Kim & Chang was named "National Law Firm of the Year - South Korea," along with top recognition in one other major category. 

On 30 November 2017, a round-table meeting that is focused on the problems and trends of disputes arising from bank guarantees and banking activities, involving credit institutions, was held at the office of VEGAS LEX.

A large number of small and medium-sized businesses are going to have to make arrangements for business succession in the near future. There are various possible approaches to organizing succession.

Karanović & Nikolić, together with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, hosted the th of November, 2017, at the Metropol Palace hotel, Belgrade. The conference represents a traditional yearly gathering of experts from the business and legal community, as well as key regulators and stakeholders, to discuss the most important issues and practical implications in field of competition law.

On 16 November 2017, VEGAS LEX law firm jointly with Pravo.ru hosted a webinar, which was devoted to overview of the requirements, problems and responsibilities for violations in the area of processing of personal data in the Russian Federation.

Valiant Bank AG has successfully placed a CHF250 million covered bond with a 10 year term and carrying a coupon of 0.375 percent. Moody's assigned a provisional (P)Aaa rating to Valiant Bank AG's mortgage covered bonds. Valiant Bank AG intends to have the covered bonds provisionally admitted to trading at the SIX Swiss Exchange on 5 December. The transaction is the first public covered bond issuance entirely structured under Swiss law with a Swiss guarantor. BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA and Zürcher Kantonalbank act as lead-manager.

GSK Stockmann reinforces its compliance group with a lateral hire from Pohlmann & Company and continues its push to focus on specific industry sectors and internationalization. Eric Mayer (51) will join GSK Stockmann on December 1, 2017 as a partner and will play a key role in growing the compliance group at GSK.

It is possible for a will to be valid even if it was written with the hand one does not normally write with. That was the verdict of the Oberlandesgericht (OLG) Köln [Higher Regional Court of Cologne] in its ruling of August 3, 2017 (Az.: 2 Wx 149/17).

On 7^th November 2017, the Court of Appeal, in Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v Gubeladze [2017] EWCA Civ 1751confirmed (again) that the extension of the Worker Registration Scheme from 1 May 2009 to 30 April 2011 was unlawful and incompatible with EU law. 

Choosing the right corporate form when establishing a company can contribute a great deal to the economic success of the business.

Asia IP recognized SyCip Salazar Hernandez & Gatmaitan’s Intellectual Property (IP) practice in its various 2017 rankings this year. SyCipLaw is a Top Tier Philippine Firm in: 

- Copyright, Asia IP Best of the Best: Copyright

- Trademark Prosecution and Trademark Contentious, Asia IP Asia’s Leading Trademark Firms

- Patent Prosecution and Patent Contentious, Asia IP Asia’s Leading Patent Firms

The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE) and the VEGAS LEX law firm, involving FAS Russia, held a round-table meeting that is devoted to the specifics and certain aspects of new pricing system and conclusion of contracts in the area of heat supply, and antimonopoly regulation and control in light of change-over to free pricing in heat supply.

Valora Holding AG completed a capital increase raising net proceeds of approximately CHF 166 million. The capital increase was executed as an "at market" rights offering. The offer price for the new shares was determined following a bookbuilding process for the shares not taken up by existing shareholders. Valora will use the proceeds from the capital increase to refinance its recent acquisition of BackWerk, to finance the expansion of production capacities, to refinance existing capital market instruments and for general corporate purposes. Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan acted as Joint Global Coordinators and Joint Bookrunners.

The testator must have testamentary capacity as a prerequisite for a valid will. Chronic delusions can give rise to a lack of testamentary capacity, as demonstrated by a ruling of the Oberlandesgericht (OLG) Frankfurt [Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt].