SDM Partners LLC > Kyiv, Ukraine > Firm Profile

SDM Partners LLC > Firm Profile

SDM Partners provides a full range of legal services in all regions of the Ukraine and CIS countries and internationally through partnership networks with leading local firms in all major capital markets and jurisdictions. Among the firm’s clients, there are many top representatives of the international and local businesses.

Our main feature is focusing on clients’ goals through understanding the Ukrainian market, special attention to each of the industries and unique longstanding experience.

Areas of practice
Antitrust and competition: Our team of antitrust and competition lawyers includes lawyers with extensive expertise in the practical application of competition law. We offer our clients a full range of legal services on competition and antitrust law, including antitrust issues that include merger cases, concerted practices, abuse of dominance, unfair competition, etc. We stay on top of industry trends, we constantly monitor the dynamics of the market and various factors that have an influence on business and always inform our clients regarding such changes.

Banking and finance:  Financial leasing, debt restructuring – are fields of our activity, as banking and finance are one of the key practices of SDM Partners. We have created a strong team of highly qualified lawyers, many of whom have long professional experience in banks’ structures and are familiar with the particularities of the banking industry from inside. There are the largest international banks and financial institutions among our clients. Our experience allows us to be indispensable in the implementation of the most difficult financing projects, but due to the same experience, we can be extremely effective when working on the standard banking products or regulatory issues.

Dispute resolution and litigation: SDM Partners provides a full range of dispute resolution services. We represent our clients before general, commercial, and administrative courts in all instances, as well as before international commercial arbitration institutions. Moreover, we have extensive experience in representing our clients in administrative procedures before such agencies as the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine and the State Tax Administration. SDM Partners gathers together the best litigators and arbitration professionals to provide bespoke solutions to any particular dispute.

Energy and natural resources: Legal advice on energy and natural resources is one of the major focus areas for our company. The energy and natural resources group advises on every tier of the energy industry and has a particular understanding of conventional power and renewables sectors. We have extensive experience in real estate and land transactions, mergers and acquisitions, tax and finance, corporate law, and IP protection, which enables us to provide comprehensive solutions for energy projects.

Intellectual property: Intellectual property is one of the most complex and interconnected areas of law, which has become a key asset of all types of business. These assets require consistent and comprehensive protection. Our clients are from different industries, including but not limited: the manufacturing and realization of light industry goods, machinery and equipment, banking, medicine, project finance, investment, agriculture, insurance, real estate, logistics, automotive, oil and gas, telecommunications, software, advertising and media, and many others fields. SDM Partners has developed comprehensive expertise in all aspects of patents, trademarks, copyright, designs, domain names, trade secrets, and related unfair competition issues. Whether designing strategies and developing worldwide intellectual property portfolios or litigating the newest generation of cases, we focus on delivering a practical and positive experience.

Commercial law: Due to our considerable experience in commercial law, we provide practical advice which is ideally positioned to add value to our clients. We are experts in the full range of commercial contracts s, including the areas of distribution, supply, sale, supply within the group, logistics, marketing, advertising, intellectual property, IT support, banking and finance, insurance, lending , sponsorship, utilities, partnership, construction, leasing and leasing, and others. This practice covers all trading activities of a business.

Corporate/ mergers and acquisitions/ investment projects: This is one of the key practices of the firm. SDM Partners provides legal advice across all manner of corporate matters to help businesses of all sizes develop and grow, whether organically or through mergers and acquisitions, including such matters as governance, finance, reorganization and liquidation, and other corporate issues. We have substantial experience in local and cross-border transactions, involving the acquisition, and the establishment of companies, joint ventures, and partnerships in Ukraine. We provide services in the development of optimal corporate structures for legal entities, company formation, tax planning, mergers and other regulatory clearances as well as share and asset deals. Our integrated team includes experts in antitrust/competition law, funds and investment management, insurance, private equity, and public policy. Our team also offers clients the combination of specialist technical and industry expertise across 12 sectors from financial services through to chemical.

International trade, project and trade financing: SDM Partners has a long-standing reputation for providing comprehensive international trade legal services of exceptional quality. Our team constantly advise and represent domestic and foreign clients in various international trade matters, including customs regulations, project and trade financing, and antidumping and safeguard investigations and representation in different dispute resolution proceedings, including international commercial arbitration. Moreover, SDM Partners is able to advise our clients on the legislation of other jurisdictions through the network of our corresponding law firms in Europe, USA, and Asia.

Oil and gas: SDM Partners has a strong track record in legal support for the companies in the oil and gas industry. With a strong track record in power projects, our expertise has evolved with the industry to include renewables, energy from waste and oil & gas, as well as increased international projects and transactions. Many of our lawyers have worked as senior in-house counsel for large multinational energy and oil companies and our secondment program means that we’re working with many clients day-in-day-out. In addition, we have vast experience in real estate and land transactions, tax and finance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate law, and IPR protection, which enables us to provide comprehensive solutions for energy projects.

Real estate and construction: SDM Partners’ real estate group comprises some of Ukrainian leading lawyers with proven expertise in this multifaceted field. Committed to delivering practical and timely results, the SDM Partners team provides clients with cost-effective advice, innovative solutions and responsive documentation for both simple and complex transactions. More than 19 years our experts have been acting for international and domestic investors as well as financial institutions on numerous large-scale residential, commercial and corporate real estate transactions at all stages of development: starting from the initial idea, legal due diligence of the property, acquisition of a land plot, transaction structuring, establishing project entities and joint ventures, endorsement of funding conditions, licensing, construction of the property, its commissioning and title registration, facility management contracts (operation and maintenance of property), leasing out and exit of the developer. SDM Partners usually takes part in drafting new laws for real estate, construction, and PPP.

Tax: SDM Partners’ tax team is a dedicated and market-leading team of tax specialists with many years of experience advising clients both in Ukraine and overseas. The members of our tax team are repeatedly recognized by experts, professional associations, and international ratings. Our firm works with our clients (whether a multinational corporation or an owner managed the business) to understand their commercial objectives and then deliver creative tax solutions that are tailored to those objectives. We support our clients with effective and practice-proven solutions in all areas of tax which are based on industry-specific insight.

Forensic and compliance: We have comprehensive experience in the fields of compliance audit, corporate investigations, litigation support, integrity due diligence, asset tracking, and computer forensics. We possess a deep understanding of Ukrainian business and regulatory environment. We provide a complex solution to your problem; we have specialists in forensic accounting, compliance, forensic IT- solutions, corporate and business intelligence.

Labor and employment: The peculiarities of the Ukrainian labor law are mainly dictated by its obsoleteness. Being employee-oriented hampers to a certain extent labor market flexibility and makes it difficult to resolve labor and employment-related matters on a parity basis. Consequently, it poses serious challenges for companies in various sensitive employment issues, including top-management dismissal. That is why SDM Partners pays close attention to the labor law area and practical application of its outdated provisions for purposes of maximum achievement of the company’s goals with respect to employees’ needs. Our lawyers from the employment team have been advising clients in nearly all industries on an entire spectrum of employment matters from the drafting of agreements to litigation for over 19 years. Moreover, our team of experienced lawyers has worked in the government team for drafting employment code.

Private client: Legal support to family businesses, private entrepreneurs and wealthy individuals. SDM Partners helps to preserve and protect the assets, to multiply them and to minimize the tax burden. We provide an extensive legal service in the protection of assets by corporate, tax and marriage law. Of all the diverse ways that can be used to structure private investment, we also recommend our clients to consider trusts and family foundations. SDM Partners has more than 100 partners in Europe, the US, and Asia and can offer clients a number of options for obtaining a residence permit to suit individual preferences.

Lawyer Profiles

Photo	Name	Position	Profile
	Mr Felix Aronovich	Position: partner. Area of practice: Criminal Law	View Profile
	Mr Serhiy Dzis	Position: partner. Area of ptactice: Commercial, Intellectual property, Labour & HR.	View Profile
	Mr Mykola Melnyk	Position: partner. Area of practice: Tax advice and Planning/tax litigation, Dispute resolution…	View Profile

Interviews

DMYTRO SYROTA, SDM PARTNERS LAW FIRM

What do you see as the main points that differentiate [law firm name] from your competitors?

SDM Partners Law Firm main differentiation points are:

• Speed without compromising the quality, proactivity and fast resultativity;
• Methodology of delivering a legal product. Our team prepares the product as comfortable as possible and in the most understandable business language;
• Wide use of IT-solutions for customer service, online platforms, collaborative applications;
• Flexibility in terms of geographic delivery of services (remotely, at the client’s office, abroad etc.)
• Ability to manage international projectsg. projects that include different jurisdictions

 

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

Currently, there are many changes and all of them are caused by the latest legal changes in Ukraine in connection with the war. These changes have particularly affected the following practices:

• Damages compensation caused by the attack of the russian federation. SDM Partners Law Firm is taking part in the courts, with the main on international corporations;
• The vast growth has been observed in labor law practice, mainly in the context of relation caused by mass immigration of people abroad or internal displacement on the territory of Ukraine.
• Another important part of labor law covers all issues related to military services, such as mobilization, the consequences of which the company must take into account when its employees are mobilized.
• Restructuring of the company’s staff – dismissal, hiring, relocation (methods and forms of registration of labor documents).
• Commercial law has also grown in areas such as logistics, warehouse management, re-signing various contracts, supply scheme
• The practice of business relocation outside Ukraine and all related issued has grown.
• M&A and investment practices has fallen, nevertheless we are happy that there are still some investment projects in Ukraine.

 

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

SDM Partners Law Firm has implemented various IT-solutions and the ability to serve the client all over the world. Both our lawyers and clients, regardless of where they are in Ukraine or abroad, can cooperate and achieve maximum results. We also showed price loyalty to our customers by providing discounts, preferential forms of payment, installments, etc., due to the current difficult financial situation.

 

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

Technology started to have a very strong influence since Covid restrictions. Prior, clients were skeptical regarding IT-solutions, and preferred traditional methods of communication and paper-communication. Covid forced the introduction of certain technologies in terms of electronic document management, and in the case of the war, it further strengthened these points. The role of online communications has increased greatly, the need for face-to-face meetings has sharply decreased.

 

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

In addition to regular consultations, we provide such a service as “lawyer on demand”. If our client needs in house lawyer on a permanent basis for a specific project, we offer one of our lawyer for specific period of time.

 

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three years’ time?

It is important for the client that law firms not only indicate strategic, but also tactical decisions.

Today, clients do not appreciate lawyers who ask additional questions. The client sets a task, and the lawyer must clearly answer simply understandably and achieve the goal. When a lawyer gives advice and gives a choice to a client, in such a way that the client should analyse as much as possible, it is not perceived well by the client. The law firm is expected to have a clear, understandable solution/solutions from which the client can choose. And these can be both tactical decisions or deep strategic decisions. What we observe is the need in lawyers to be business initiative, understand the responsibilities and integrate into business processes (ease, rather than complicate it).

We hope for the end of the war and the victory of Ukraine as soon as possible, after which we are confident that there will be serious investments in the Ukrainian economy, in a variety of areas, and our company is already giving a platform to provide maximum support for such an investment boom that awaits Ukraine, and we hope that this will contribute to our firm’s leading positions in the top legal market.