TVN – GC Powerlist
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Central and Eastern Europe Teams 2018

Sports and media

TVN

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Central and Eastern Europe Teams 2018

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TVN

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Poland’s largest television and media group TVN employs what nominators call a ‘fantastic’ team of approximately 40 in-house lawyers, which for many years has successfully been led by general counsel Marek Szydlowski. Over the course of the last three years, the team successfully navigated TVN through two major transactions. In 2015 TVN was taken over from ITI Holding by the US corporation Scripps Networks Interactive (SNI) a transaction worth almost €1bn completed in an uneasy regulatory environment. Due to the deal’s complexity the transaction was nominated as “transaction of the year” in the TMT sector in Poland, ‘TVN legal team went smoothly through all regulatory obstacles and worked hard – with success – on all complex integration issues,’ one source shares when making reference to the team’s contribution. More recently, the team went through a very similar process when SNI was acquired by Discovery as a result of a complex US$15bn transaction. In parallel to supporting such important deals for TVN, the department has consistently shown great competence and finesse in the course of fighting certain government legislative initiatives with potential impact on freedom of speech in the country. In one example, the Polish National Radio and Television council had to withdraw from a major penalty over PLN1.5m imposed on TVN for the alleged news manipulation. As one source says, ‘the TVN legal team is perfectly well organised and competent. It is a pleasure and challenge working with them. They are very demanding and really know how to deal with cooperating law firms. In the same time they are fair and friendly’. Director Marzena Draganiak is also praised for leadership and expertise in the oversight of these high importance and complex transactions.

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