Dancing hamsters

Dancing hamsters. Until the summer of 2022, like most of the public, I probably perceived them only as a catchy advertisement, the logo of a successful Slovak e-commerce company. Although Jaroslav Chrapko was a publicly known CEO, I didn’t know his story in detail. Last summer, I received an offer that was not to be refused. To represent Jara and Dedoles in negotiations for a key investment that was supposed to restart the company after a difficult period that resulted in an orderly restructuring. I was delighted to accept the offer, expecting it to be another typical VC investment, but this time for one of the top Slovak e-commerce brands. However, it wasn’t. In my, shall we say, medium-long transaction life so far, this was probably the most complicated VC investment I’ve worked on. The complexity of the entire transaction and investment documentation was significantly multiplied not only by the financial situation of the target company, but especially by the ongoing restructuring proceedings and the restrictions resulting from them. What normally takes two to three months to negotiate in this type of investment financing took half a year. The documentation has been signed and earlier this month a meeting of creditors also approved the Dedoles restructuring plan. Jaroslav Chrapko and Jan Cifra, thank you for the opportunity to lend a hand.