Kinstellar has recently advised Tempo Software, a leading provider of portfolio management solutions for product development organizations, on the acquisition of Amovos, which operates the Old Street Solutions brand. Old Street Solutions is an Atlassian Marketplace Partner simplifying Jira and Confluence with their popular Custom Charts for Jira and Custom Charts for Confluence apps. The acquisition will expand Tempo’s Atlassian-based product suite providing users with easy-to-use, customizable data visualizations of Jira data, so teams can focus on getting work done quickly, not struggling with complicated corporate reporting tools. Mark Lorion, CEO at Tempo Software, said: We’re thrilled to welcome Old
Kinstellar is delighted and proud to announce the promotions to Partner of Tomáš Melišek (Bratislava), Levente Hegedűs (Budapest), Bulut Girgin (Istanbul), Anastasiya Bolkhovitinova, Natalia Kirichenko, Oleg Matiusha, Illya Muchnyk (all in our Kyiv office), and to Counsel of Dominika Bajzáthová (Bratislava). PARTNERS Tomá š Melišek, Bratislava Tomáš is the Head of the local Banking & Finance service line. He has 15 years of experience in banking and finance, focusing on project and acquisition financing as well as on financial regulations. Tomáš has substantial experience advising clients on significant financing transactions in the areas of real estate, energy, infrastructure, automotive, media
Kinstellar, working with Morgan Lewis London, has advised TAWAL, the leading integrated ICT infrastructure provider in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on the local law aspects of their successful bid to acquire the tower assets of United Group B.V., consisting of more than 4,800 towers across Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia, for EUR 1.2 billion. The closing of the transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals. Kinstellar assisted with due diligence, regulatory advice and local law support on the transaction documents in Bulgaria and Croatia, and ODI Law in Slovenia provided assistance on all Slovenian law aspects of the transaction. The regional team was led by Diana Dimova, Partner in Sofia. The team in Bulgaria
The recent resolution of the European Parliament on video games calls on the European Commission to take the necessary steps to bring about a European approach to loot boxes which could lead to more restrictive regulation. Kinstellar’s TMT team looked into the national framework for loot boxes in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine to conclude that, while no specific local laws exist, the developments around gambling regulation should be monitored, as loot boxes have already been discussed in the context of national rules on gambling in some countries. Click on this link or the image below to read below on overview prepared by our TMT experts in each jurisdiction.
Investing in crypto assets is a high-risk activity. The existing structure of the crypto market, its supervision and its participants, is currently such that it cannot guarantee the security of funds, even for the customers of the best-known and, seemingly, best-protected exchanges. Given these inherent risks, there are several aspects that should be considered when choosing an exchange. In a recent interview with Minfin.com.ua, a Ukrainian portal on finances and investments, Illya Muchnyk, Counsel in our Kyiv office, shared his views on possible ways to secure funds when investing in cryptocurrencies. Read the full article here (in Ukrainian only).
Our team in Croatia has advised former shareholders of Insite on the sale of shares to Halcom, a leading provider of innovative solutions for payment systems. Insite is an experienced and innovative supplier of CRM systems to the banking, insurance, and retail sectors. Their CRM solution has been successfully recognised for ten years by some of the largest European banks and retailers. Halcom, as a division of Juniper Group, is part of the multinational group Constellation Software Inc. Halcom plays a leading role in developing payment systems in Central and South-Eastern Europe and ranks among the top providers of innovative and secure payment and financial services. The Kinstellar team in Zagreb
October 2022 – Over the past few years, the CEE region has been the focus of vibrant M&A activity in the technology sector. Bulgaria is no exception, with a number of acquisitions completed in IT services, software development, gaming, e-commerce, and digital services. A notable trend in the structuring of these transactions is the growing use of earn-out payment structures. In our recent practice, earnouts have been agreed upon in the majority of the acquisitions of tech companies by their founders. While previously earn-outs were not very popular in Bulgaria, such structures have become key to successful acquisitions. They are a useful tool to bridge the different purchase price expectations of the buyer and the seller by providing
10 October 2022 – Kinstellar is delighted to announce that Annamária Csenterics has joined the firm’s Budapest office as a Partner and Co-Head of the local Corporate M&A service line. Annamária Csenterics is an experienced Corporate M&A practitioner with a career spanning 20 years at international law firms and as an in-house lawyer. She has served as lead counsel on scores of domestic and cross-border mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and strategic transactions, including spin-offs, split-offs and exits. Her clients have included corporations as well as private clients domiciled in the US, Europe and Hungary. Annamária will co-head the local Corporate M&A service line, including Real Estate
Kinstellar has successfully advised 52 Entertainment, a worldwide leader in bridge online (BBO, Funbridge) and e-sailing (Virtual Regatta), on its expansion into strategy and mind games by the acquisition of Casualino (also known as Zariba Group), the largest independent gaming studio in Bulgaria. The purchase of Causalino, a prolific creator of live games and highly popular brands, will help 52 Entertainment to continue its contribution to shaping the future of mobile and web gaming. The HLD-backed 52 Entertainment is scaling its operations to create new genre-defining top-grossing games for millions of new players. Kinstellar’s team was led by Antonia Mavrova (Partner) and Atanas Mihaylov (Counsel) and
Kinstellar has successfully advised Kyivstar on the acquisition of a controlling stake in Helsi. Kyivstar is the largest digital operator in Ukraine with about 25 million mobile subscribers and over 1.2 million home internet subscribers as of June 2022. The company provides services based on a wide range of mobile and fixed-line technologies, including 4G. Helsi is the largest medical information system and a leading digital provider in the field of healthcare in Ukraine. More than four million people are already users of the Helsi mobile application, with 10 million consultation bookings and three million online consultations per month. More than 1,300 healthcare institutions and over 49,000 doctors throughout
An intense effort to agree on unified directly applicable European rules for digital services is finally yielding results. On 5 July 2022, almost two years after their introduction by the European Commission, the European Parliament adopted in the first reading the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), following an earlier deal reached between the Parliament and the Council of the European Union on 23 April and 24 March 2022, respectively. Both the DSA and DMA are landmark rules with the potential to fundamentally change the way digital services are provided within the European Union (EU). In this installment, we look at the DSA, which updates the rules for online intermediary liability 20 years on from
As the process of 5G coverage expansion continues, we bring you a short status update on 5G auctions and 5G rollout in the Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia regions. Kazakhstan Frequency already allocated: 3.5 GHz. Announced / expected 5G auctions: Three lots each for 100 MHz around 3.5 GHz will be sold at auctions that are planned for the end of May 2022. One lot per city—Almaty, Nur-Sultan and Shymkent—will be offered. Stage of 5G auctions and auction method: The relevant law and regulations for holding auctions have been adopted. Auctions will be held in two stages. At the first stage the bidders' compliance with qualification requirements