We provide advice in a full range of corporate law matters, including mergers and acquisitions and acquisition of distressed companies, spin-offs, joint-ventures, corporate governance, restructurings and privatizations. The individual experience of each of our corporate lawyers, combining detailed industry knowledge with core legal skills, allow us to advise the clients on highly focused corporate law matters in a quick and efficient manner, and come with optimized, cost efficient solutions even for the most sophisticated cases, in order for our clients to achieve their business objectives.

Our advice refers to both procedural aspects and legal consequences of corporate transactions and of other corporate actions, such as reporting issues, directorial duties, representation contests and general corporate law matters.

Our team supports corporate management, boards of directors and board committees on a wide variety of corporate governance matters, including corporate responsibility, directorial duties, legal compliance. Consumer goods, retail, automotive, aeronautics, energy, technology, real estate are only few of the industries we excel at supporting our clients with adequate corporate advice.

In times of financial crisis, governmental strategies to boost the economy are affected by the scarcity of public funds. Nationalizations where private rescue initiatives for distressed companies seem to fail are triggering more legal issues on the table in addition to the foregoing. Nevertheless, investing in infrastructure is becoming more and more a focus area for institutional investors as well as local governments with an aim to support privatizations, project finance and public private partnerships as alternatives to traditional procurement activities.

Our Construction & Infrastructure team members have acquired individually a long-standing expertise in all fields of regulatory and administrative law matters, such as utilities, state aid, public procurement and urban planning, as well as awareness of the issues presented by the regulatory process and the scrutiny of the competent public authorities. Our specialists have a large experience in public private partnerships and procurement tendering processes.

At the same time, we were involved in all sectors of the construction industry, with a particular emphasize on infrastructure (electric transmission lines, railroads, cement plants, roads, and water infrastructure facilities), energy (both conventional and renewable) and real estate matters. We constantly update our knowledge with the new technological and legal trends shaping the construction industry. For example, we are deeply involved in renewable energy, and are constantly developing new contracting concepts and structures to meet the changing needs of our clients.

We advise a large spectrum of clients, including corporates, investment funds, utilities, contractors, lenders, public funded entities and local authorities, owners in all types of energy and infrastructure projects, including photovoltaic, wind, biomass and biogas, high efficiency co-generation plants, electric transmissions projects and privatizations. This experience allows us to understand perspectives and concerns of each participant to a specific project and identify and offer to our clients tailor-made legal solutions to cover to the best extent possible any related risks.

We provide advice in a full range of corporate law matters, including mergers and acquisitions and acquisition of distressed companies, spin-offs, corporate governance, restructurings and privatizations. The individual experience of each of our corporate lawyers, combining detailed industry knowledge with core legal skills, allow us to advise the clients on highly focused corporate law matters in a quick and efficient manner, and come with optimized, cost efficient solutions even for the most sophisticated cases, in order for our clients to achieve their business objectives.

Our advice refers to both procedural aspects and legal consequences of corporate transactions and of other corporate actions, such as reporting issues, directorial duties, representation contests and general corporate law matters.

Our team supports corporate management, boards of directors and board committees on a wide variety of corporate governance matters, including corporate responsibility, directorial duties, legal compliance. Consumer goods, retail, automotive, aeronautics, energy, technology, real estate are only few of the industries we excel at supporting our clients with adequate corporate advice.

Șerban & Asociații comprises the largest team of specialists in criminal law among the leading law firms in Romania and is a recognized leader in the assistance of Top 50 major Romanian companies in matters concerning the representation of corporations, boards of directors, officers and employees, other management bodies and individuals, as well as of victims of fraud in connection with a broad range of government investigations, enforcement actions, internal investigations, and white collar criminal investigations and litigation.

Our Criminal investigation & white collar crime team headed by Mr. Adrian Pichler , as Senior Partner, handles all aspects of criminal trials and related civil and administrative subsidiary actions in front of all jurisdictional ordinary courts, as well as before special criminal investigation authorities. Our team benefits also from the exquisite know how and experience of Mr. George Serban , our Managing Partner, who continues to support our specialists and to supervise the most complex criminal cases. We have also negotiated many favorable settlements for our clients involving complex parallel proceedings with criminal, civil and administrative components. Our services are frequently retained by management bodies to conduct internal investigations into possible irregularities and infringement of accounting and other mandatory regulatory matters raised by governmental authorities or whistle-blowers, and to provide guidance with respect to corporate governance issues. Our team has the necessary expertise in the recovery of the proceeds of fraud through civil court actions and liaising with criminal investigators, as well. Given our extensive experience in this field, we are frequently referred by other leading law firms in Romania to support their own clients in criminal investigation matters of the nature and complexity as presented above.

Recent fraud and criminal prosecution cases included advising local and international companies in various matters including fraud, fraudulent management, corruption crimes, IT and e-commerce crimes, environment criminal breaches, H&S offences and embezzlements.

Șerban & Asociații was granted the award for ”White Collar Law Firm of the Year in Romania” for the year 2010 and 2011 by the Corporate International Magazine, one of the leading monthly titles for business leaders, professional advisers and providers of finance throughout the world.

At Serban & Asociatii, we set up efficiently teams of litigators in order to minimize costs and time for resolving our clients’ disputes. We are able to assemble such fully focused, highly specialized and integrated teams to deal with all important matters of clients’ problems and to handle simultaneously cases for them in multiple forums. We always partner up with our clients in order to identify and carry on the most suitable business solutions, with as little disruption for the clients’ business as possible. Our aim is to support our clients in such way as to resolve any disputes with as little overall litigation exposure as possible, but should these not be avoidable, we are not afraid to assist our clients either by pursuing or defending litigation or arbitration to protect their business.

As one of the leading local dispute resolution practice, we provide professional advice and representation to our clients on litigation, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and regulatory matters, in the following fields:

1. • Administrative and fiscal contentious and public law
2. • Alternative dispute resolution
3. • Engineering, public procurement and construction
4. • Environment, planning & regulatory
5. • Product liability
6. • Commercial litigation
7. • Competition disputes
8. • Insolvency
9. • International (ICC) arbitration
10. • Investigations – corporate and regulatory

While human resources are among the most important business resources, workforce management is among the most challenging tasks, especially in a quite high protectionist legal frame for employees.

Our Employment department assists clients on daily basis in all employment matters, from negotiating, concluding and terminating individual and collective employment contracts, drafting staff hiring procedures and KPIs setting-up, drafting internal regulations, disciplinary investigation procedure, workplace safety compliance procedure, providing legal assistance to clients within collective layoff processes etc.

Among the most recent major employment projects we mention providing legal assistance during the negotiations of a collective bargaining agreement for one of the leading multinational retail chain, and two collective layoffs for a leading multinational tobacco manufacturer, and for a leading multinational company operating in catering industry, involving more than 200 employees.

In the current economical environment, energy and utilities investments can no longer be supported by traditional public funding and raising additional funds for this national investment need calls for creativity and innovation for its achievement, backed up, at the same time, by a good knowledge of the relevant industries and the related best practices.

We at Serban & Asociatii, have a team of specialists combining the above with first-hand experience in energy, mining and utilities large projects, allowing us to assist our clients with the structuring, financing, acquisition or sale, and implementation of their projects in an always changing and challenging Romanian economy. We are able to prudently assess the needs of each of our clients and to provide them with tailor-made and genuine legal solutions.

Our portfolio of clients include investors in all types of energy and utilities projects, predominantly in renewable energy fields, such as photovoltaic, wind, biomass and biogass, as well as in oil and gas, pipelines, refineries, electric transmissions projects, brown-field and green-field investments and privatizations, but also commercial lenders, investment banks, project sponsors and contractors. Our Energy and Utilities team members are internally supported by a strong regulatory team, with experience of dealing with regulators and antitrust authorities, as well as particular experience of takeovers and acquisitions work in the energy and utilities sectors.

Real estate transactions have become more complex and specialized in the last years, featuring many cross-border elements for tax efficiency purposes mainly.

Serban & Asociatii has specialists which hold individually a great knowledge of transactions of such nature and complexity, supporting inter alia real estate developers, lenders, investment banks and funds, and major international companies with real estate related projects, such as, sale or purchase, financing, JVs, construction, development, operation and management of retail, commercial, industrial and residential projects throughout Romania.

Our Real Estate team also supports the clients with advice on commercial leases (lessor or lessee side), disputes and arbitration in real estate related matters, arrangement outside the courts and restructurings, including under insolvency procedure, traditional sale, purchase and joint venture transactions concerning office buildings, hotels and shopping centers being a significant part of Serban & Asociatii’s real estate practice.

At Serban & Asociatii we are known on the market for providing swift and pragmatic assistance on a variety of complex restructuring & insolvency projects, our experts having represented in the last years clients in some of the largest and most difficult national restructurings and insolvencies, such as Aro Campulung bankruptcy case, Astra Vagoane Arad insolvency case, or BOOM TV insolvency case.

In general, our team, advise creditors, including banks and other financial investors and steering committees, insolvency practitioners, corporate debtors and their directors/officers on restructuring and insolvency matters.

Our advice includes debt restructuring and rescheduling, equity capital raising and restructuring, financially distressed companies and creditor, insolvency litigations, distressed creditor and equity investments. Furthermore, we have facilitated settlements of all types, supported with capital raising in order to prevent payment defaults, and assisted in disposing or acquiring core and non-core assets in such ways as to protect and preserve their values.