Karanovic & Nikolic has announced that M&A, competition, and business regulation specialist Rastko Petakovic has been made Senior Partner at the firm.
Petakovic began his career as a trainee in Karanovic & Nikolic's Belgrade office in 2005. He spent his internship within the firm's corporate and M&A practice and in parallel specialized in competition law at programs with major international law firms and engaged in advocacy ahead of the adoption of the 2005 Competition Law.
In early 2007, as a Senior Associate, Petakovic founded the firm’s highly regarded Competition team.
In January 2010 he made Partner. According to Karanovic & Nikolic, “under Rastko's leadership, our Competition team acted in virtually all major antitrust and merger cases in Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and other countries, in which the firm successfully defended a number of clients in highly visible cartel, dominance and merger control cases.”
Among the matters Petakovic has worked on is Serbia Broadband’s 2015 acquisition of EUnet (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on April 30, 2015) — a deal he provided additional information about in the August 2015 issue of the CEE Legal Matters magazine.
He also worked on Telemach’s successful claim that HD Win had abused its dominant position before the Bosnian Competition Council (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on February 16, 2016), Mid Europa Partners' acquisition of a controlling stake in the Danube Foods Group B.V. and Clates Holding B.V. (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on February 3, 2015), and Agrokor’s successful application for merger clearance in relation to its combination with Slovenia's Mercator (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on June 9, 2014).
Commenting on his appointment, Petakovic said: "I am delighted to take on this new role at the firm, one I've admired from the first day of orientation, more than eleven years ago, to this very day. The successes of Karanovic & Nikolic were driven by the vision of all of our partners but they would have been impossible without relying on teamwork — so above all I am grateful to all of my colleagues with whom I have worked over the years who have made this possible."
Karanovic & Nikolic Managing Partner Dejan Nikolic commented: "When we founded the firm more than twenty years ago, we believed our success would depend on our ability to recruit and develop the most talented lawyers from the region, and seeing someone's career evolve so fully within our organisation – from being a promising trainee to making Senior Partner – has been delightful to witness."
