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
An amendment to the Significant Market Power Act (the “Amendment”) has been passed by the Czech parliament. The Amendment, which transposes EU Directive No. 2019/633 on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food products supply chain, will introduce key changes to the concepts of significant market power in the Czech Republic. Specifically, the Amendment provides a new definition of significant market power by reducing the turnover threshold for the application of a statutory assumption of significant market power to EUR 2 million. In line with the related EU Directive, the amendment is designed to provide better protections for smaller businesses against unfair trading
Kinstellar’s Bratislava office has recently advised a syndicate of banks led by Všeobecná úverová banka (VÚB Bank) and including Slovenská sporiteľňa, ČSOB and HYPO-BANK Burgenland, in relation to a EUR 100 million club loan facility for refinancing and further investment in Bory Mall—a shopping and entertainment centre in Bratislava developed by Penta Real Estate. Kinstellar’s team in Bratislava was managed by Counsel Tomáš Melišek and included Dominika Bajzáthová (Managing Associate), Dáša Labašová (Senior Associate) and Michaela Straková (Junior Associate). Partner Marián Šulík led the team of Škubla & Partneri, which acted as advisors to the borrower.
The rapid growth of online shopping as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for different payment options for consumers at the checkout. One such option that is increasingly popular with consumers is the “buy now, pay later” (“BNPL”) solution. The hot trend in consumer credit BNPL allows consumers to defer the payment of the product and repay the purchase price in several instalments over a certain period of time, usually at no interest. BNPL is also a palatable option for merchants, as it gives them another avenue to generate sales by providing consumers an accessible opportunity to acquire products on credit. Such manageable payment options are also likely to strengthen consumer