Widely recognized as an entry point for investors seeking opportunities in Eastern Europe and as a hub for the region, Austria is home to a large number of regional General Counsel and Heads of Legal. We reached out to a number of them to get their perspectives on this critical gateway to CEE.

Austria is definitely lagging behind in terms of Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) penetration: According to recent data of the FTTH Council Europe, only one country worldwide has a worse penetration rate than Austria, while other sources suggest there are two countries below Austria. For this reason many initiatives have been implemented on municipal and provincial levels to provide Austrian households and undertakings with high-speed Internet access in parts of the country where a purely commercial assessment would not justify such investments. Obviously this is not yet enough.

The winners of the 2017 CEE Deal of the Year Awards were announced at the first ever CEE Legal Matters Deal of the Year Awards Banquet last night in Prague. The biggest smiles in the joyous and music-filled celebration of CEE lawyering, perhaps, were on the faces of Partners from Avellum and Sayenko Kharenko, which, along with White & Case and Latham & Watkins, won the award both for Ukrainian Deal of the Year and CEE Deal of the Year for their work on the 2017 Ukraine Eurobond Issue (a story initially reported by CEE Legal Matters on October 2, 2017).

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In The Corner Office we invite Managing Partners at law firms across the region to share information about their unique roles. The question this time around: What is your favorite question when interviewing a job applicant, and why?

The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was introduced to fight corruption on an international level. Corporations of all nationalities which are established under US law or traded on a US stock market are embraced by this act, as are all individuals who commit relevant acts on the territory of the US.

The Parties’ Positions

In state court proceedings, Claimant requested indemnity pursuant to Section 24 of the Austrian Commercial Agents Act, basing the Austrian court’s jurisdiction on Section 99 of the Law on Court Jurisdiction, pursuant to which a person who does not have a forum generale in Austria may nevertheless be sued in Austrian courts if he or she has assets within the district of an Austrian court. Claimant argued that Respondent had assets in Austria as it had an outstanding claim against it.

The world is currently facing the Fourth Industrial Revolution – an era of technological progress that will have significant impacts on the entire labor market system.

The 2017 CEE Legal Matters General Summit took place at the Intercontinental Hotel in Warsaw on June 1-2, 2017, once again bringing together well over a hundred General Counsel and Heads of Legal from across Central and Eastern Europe for two full days (and one entertaining evening) of seminars, panel discussions, best practices review, and networking. This year’s event — the third annual, following the 2015 GC Summit in Budapest and the 2016 GC Summit in Istanbul — was the biggest and most successful yet.

On May 31 and June 1, 2017, CEE Legal Matters was proud to host a rare event: A gathering of those senior lawyers from each Central and Eastern European country identified by peers as being most influential, most important, most uniquely responsible for having created the country’s modern commercial legal market.

Directive 2013/11/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of May 21, 2013, on alternative dispute resolution for consumer disputes (“Directive on Consumer ADR”) obliged Member States to bring into force the laws, regulations, and administrative provisions necessary to comply with it by July 9, 2015. 

“Vienna is the gate to Eastern Europe” – Niki Lauda