I WILL NEVER WORK ON A TRANSACTION LIKE THAT AGAIN!

I WILL NEVER WORK ON A TRANSACTION LIKE THAT AGAIN! ..I said to myself in 2016, when I left Allen & Overy after the agreement on the sale of 66% stake in Slovenske elektrárny to EPH Group. It was one of the largest M&A transactions in Slovakia and for me personally the most complex I have worked on so far. And I really haven’t worked on a transaction like this since. But I have advised on 54 others in those 8 years. The appetite grows with the food, and sometime in early 2022, I told myself that even though we had started building Highgate Law & Tax from the ground up, we had the potential to play major league transactional counsel. Looking back on the transactions we completed in 2023, I say with a fair amount of humility that we are already playing that first league and are best placed to do so: 🏦 Law and tax under one roof – I honestly can no longer imagine doing transactions without tax overlap – whether it’s setting up a sale structure from the sellers’ tax perspective or tax-neutral “carve-outs” of assets that are not supposed to be part of the transaction, I believe our tax-legal transactional advice is unique in the Slovak market. 🤝 Experience and client references – we have over 15 years of experience (6 years under the Highgate brand) in transactional advisory. We represent sellers and buyers (investors) in private equity, venture capital and “classic” M&A transactions. We advise on a wide range of transactions ranging in value from €100k to €32m, which we are currently working on. In 2023, for example, we acted for: ✅Crowdberry, an investment platform, on the acquisition of an additional business stake in top European e-commerce company GymBeam. This was a complex transaction combining elements of a convertible loan conversion, a share buy-out between the shareholders and the related renegotiation of the shareholders’ agreement; ✅ the sellers in the sale of a 90% stake in DETOX s.r.o., one of SK’s largest hazardous industrial waste treatment companies, to KOSIT a.s., a company owned by the investment group WOOD & Company. In addition to advising on the due diligence and tax-legal set-up of the transaction structure, we negotiated comprehensive transaction documentation for the client; and ✅Atlas Copco Global Group on the due diligence and acquisition of a stake in the Slovak company ACJ. 🏆 Awards – we were awarded “Highly Recommended Law Firm” for M&A in the Law Firm of the Year competition, organized by TREND weekly in cooperation with EPRAVO.SK; 👩‍💻 People that are few on the market – we are systematically and long-term building a top team of people(Tatiana Jochymová, Dominika Fedáková, Alexandra Fujeríková, Veronika Haladová), which in addition to expertise is often extremely effective in reducing unnecessarily high levels of testosterone in negotiations 💪 (no kidding!) On these foundations we have the immodest ambition to be the first choice for advising on sales and investments in Slovak companies.