CMS Poland awarded “Legal Advisor of the Year”

CMS Poland has been awarded the prestigious “Private Equity Diamond” for the Legal Advisor of the Year in 2014. This is the fourth annual “Private Equity Diamond” competition organised by the Executive Club with patronage from the Polish Private Equity Association. The best legal advisor is selected by popular vote of members of the Polish Private Equity Association, a group of private equity and venture capital investors active in Poland. This year the award was given to two law firms – Weil Gotshal Manges was also awarded.

The award, which CMS receives for the second time, reflects the scale, volume and profile of the transactions closed by CMS on the Polish market, as well as the complexity of the legal advice and the reputation of the CMS team.

“We are very pleased to be recognised as Legal Advisor of the Year 2014, especially that last year was an interesting time on the transactions market. We’re increasingly seeing a lack of homogeneity on the M&A market in the CEE region. Countries such as Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia are getting greater interest from investors,”says Marek Sawicki, partner at CMS. “Recent months give reason for optimism. After the first quarter it was clear that we are dealing with much more active trading than we saw in the same period last year. However, it seems that the largest transactions on the Polish market have already taken place – the near future will be dominated by medium-scale acquisitions. Thus the firm's ability to handle multiple simultaneous transactions will be crucial.”

Last year CMS closed 39 transactions in Eastern Europe, 1/5th for private equity funds. M&A deals completed by CMS include:

• the purchase of Wirtualna Polska from Telekomunikacja Polska by shareholders of o2 Group and Innova Capital;
• Holtzbrinck Digital’s sale of the Money.pl web portal to Wirtualna Polska Group and Innova Capital;
• Norwegian financial services company B2 Holding’s acquisition of shares in Ultimo, a Polish debt collection agency, from private equity fund Advent International and the founder and shareholder of Ultimo Janusz Tchórzewski;
• Oresa Ventures' sale of Trinity Corporate Services, a provider of corporate services.