Banking & Finance

CMS has ad­vised Grein­er on the sale of its ex­tru­sion di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing op­er­a­tion­al as­sets in Aus­tria and the Czech Re­pub­lic, to Nim­bus. KP­MG Leg­al ad­vised Nim­bus.Grein­er is an Aus­tri­an plastics and foam spe­cial­ist com­pany.

Shortly be­fore the be­gin­ning of the year, CMS Aus­tria sup­por­ted the Aus­tri­an plastics and foam spe­cial­ist Grein­er AG on the suc­cess­ful sale of its ex­tru­sion di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing the as­so­ci­ated op­er­a­tion­al real es­tate in Nußbach, Up­per Aus­tria, and Trhové Sv­iny, Czech Re­pub­lic. On 21 Decem­ber 2021, the Ger­man Fed­er­al Car­tel Of­fice ap­proved the sale of the Aus­tri­an- based Grein­er Ex­tru­sion Group (GEG) to the Dutch-Ger­man in­vest­ment com­pany Nim­bus – the ma­jor­ity own­er, amongst oth­er things, of bat­ten­feld-cin­cin­nati, one of CEG’s com­pet­it­ors with sub­si­di­ar­ies in Ger­many, Aus­tria, the USA and China. The now af­fil­i­ated com­pan­ies in­tend to ex­ploit syn­er­gies in pur­chas­ing, at least. Oth­er­wise, both en­tit­ies will re­main in­de­pend­ent com­pan­ies with their or­gan­isa­tion­al struc­tures and mar­ket pres­ence. As part of the trans­ac­tion, the ex­perts of the CMS ad­vis­ory team, led by Al­ex­an­der Rakosi, Flori­an May­er and Anna Hiegel­sper­ger, had to nav­ig­ate nu­mer­ous com­plex leg­al top­ics on trans­ac­tion-re­lated as­pects as well as in the areas of real es­tate law and an­ti­trust/com­pet­i­tion law. The in­ter­na­tion­ally ex­per­i­enced team of ex­perts at CMS Aus­tria also in­cluded Di­eter Zand­ler (an­ti­trust law), Vanessa Hor­aceck (com­pet­i­tion law), Hans Le­der­er (trade­mark law), Jo­hannes Hysek (real es­tate law), Mar­i­ella Ka­poun (real es­tate), Sibylle Novak (in­ter­na­tion­al tax law), Thomas As­pal­ter (tax law), Cor­ne­lia Kreuth (M&A), Chris­toph Birner (fin­an­cing) and Al­ex­an­dros Hant­asch (cor­por­ate trans­ac­tions). In ad­di­tion, the Aus­tri­an ad­vis­ory team was also sup­por­ted by col­leagues from oth­er CMS of­fices. The in­ter­na­tion­al CMS team con­sisted of Stepan Hav­ranek (CZ), Eva Bryn­dova (CZ), Mi­chael Mun­zinger (PRC), Lei Shi (PRC), Dipesh Santilale (UK), Sabby Ken­zie (UK), Mar­gaux Deuchler (F), Thomas Hains (F), Blazej Zagor­ski (PL) and Marta Os­owska-Buba (PL). Lead part­ner Al­ex­an­der Rakosi hap­pily notes: “In­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions bring multi-fa­ceted chal­lenges. We are glad to have been able to provide com­pre­hens­ive leg­al ad­vice to the Grein­er Group from pro­ject kick-off to its suc­cess­ful clos­ing across all coun­tries.”

Jo­hannes Jur­anek and Gün­ther Hans­lik will take over man­age­ment re­spons­ib­il­it­ies at the Vi­enna law firm CMS on 1 Feb­ru­ary 2022. To­geth­er they want to make the firm fit to face the chal­lenges of the fu­ture. CMS Reich-Rohr­wig Hainz Recht­san­wälte GmbH will have a lead­er­ship duo as of 1 Feb­ru­ary 2022 com­pris­ing data pro­tec­tion spe­cial­ist Jo­hannes Jur­anek, who has already led the firm suc­cess­fully for the past three years, and bank­ing part­ner Gün­ther Hans­lik. They have been elec­ted by the firm’s part­ners as man­aging part­ners for the next three years. CMS Aus­tria already has a lead­ing po­s­i­tion in Cent­ral and South­east Europe and has of­fices in Vi­enna, Bel­grade, Brat­is­lava, Istan­bul, Ky­iv, Ljubljana, Podgor­ica, Sa­ra­jevo, Skopje, Sofia and Zagreb. To­geth­er, the new man­age­ment duo wants to fur­ther strengthen the po­s­i­tion­ing of the law firm, one of the most renowned in Aus­tria. To this end, they will ex­pand the firm’s core com­pet­en­cies, make CMS an even more at­tract­ive em­ploy­er for the best law­yers in the coun­try, ad­vance di­git­al­isa­tion, and con­tin­ue to over­see the suc­cess­ful im­ple­ment­a­tion of the “Vis­ion 2025” strategy. Jo­hannes Jur­anek will be re­spons­ible for IT and the de­vel­op­ment of new in­nov­at­ive tech­nic­al tools over the next three years and con­tin­ue to rep­res­ent the com­pany in the CMS glob­al Ex­ec­ut­ive Com­mit­tee. Gün­ther Hans­lik will be re­spons­ible for Hu­man Re­sources, Mar­ket­ing & Com­mu­nic­a­tions, Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment in both Aus­tria, and the com­pany's loc­a­tions in the CEE coun­tries. The fin­an­cial area is jointly su­per­vised by the two. CMS is one of the most tech­nic­ally in­nov­at­ive law firms in the coun­try. For ex­ample, Lupl.com, an in­ter­na­tion­al plat­form for the ex­change of in­form­a­tion between leg­al de­part­ments and law firms, was de­veloped to­geth­er with ex­tern­al part­ners and very suc­cess­fully launched on the mar­ket. Jo­hannes Jur­anek: “New tech­no­lo­gies and di­git­al of­fers are of great im­port­ance to our cli­ents and ap­pre­ci­ated by com­pan­ies and pub­lic au­thor­it­ies alike. In re­cent years, we have re­peatedly proven that we are among the mar­ket lead­ers in the di­git­al­isa­tion area. We want to fur­ther strengthen this po­s­i­tion and ex­pand it in all areas.” Gün­ther Hans­lik: "We are con­stantly im­prov­ing the qual­ity of our ser­vices. All em­ploy­ees have been act­ively in­volved in our pro­cess of change as we set course for a thriv­ing fu­ture to­geth­er." The new man­age­ment will also fo­cus on the top­ics of sus­tain­ab­il­ity, in­creased CEE in­teg­ra­tion and di­versity. Gün­ther Hans­lik: “At CMS, we are mind­ful of re­sources in all de­part­ments. We are also the first law firm to have an eco-profit cer­ti­fic­ate.” The bar is also set high for the new man­age­ment team in terms of eco­nom­ic suc­cess: CMS Aus­tria achieved the highest turnover in its his­tory in 2021. “This is a great chal­lenge for us, which we gladly ac­cept, and which mo­tiv­ates us to be­come even bet­ter to meet the high de­mands,” says Jo­hannes Jur­anek.

1. E-con­tract­ing, e-state­ments and e-sig­na­tures in bank­ing & fin­ance trans­ac­tion con­tracts and leg­al state­ments 1.1 Which are the typ­ic­al doc­u­ments (con­tracts, leg­al state­ments, etc.) where writ­ten...