Who knows lawyers better than other lawyers? In this issue’s Face-to-Face feature, Maravela & Asociatii Partners Gelu Maravela and Alina Popescu interview Mihaela Popescu, the former Head of Legal at Mercedes-Benz Financial Services.

Many of us have experienced such a scenario: It’s a beautiful summer. I’m on holiday in Austria. Even before the holiday began, it had become clear that I would have to interrupt it for a meeting in Berlin. When my wife asked me whether this would be the only interruption, I was convinced that I wouldn’t be away for more than one day. It turned out differently. After my return from Berlin, I had to leave our holiday home for another two days. The following week, in which I’d anticipated no business travel, I ended up spending only half a day of it with my family. I had to cancel common (and long-planned) visits of friends, two beautiful (and of course also already paid for) concerts in Salzburg, and I was either travelling for business or on the phone that whole week. 

The ancient Romans called the hottest, most humid days of summer “dog days” because they associated the hottest days of summer with the star Sirius – named the “Dog Star” because it was the brightest star in the Canis Major (Large Dog) constellation. Indeed, Sirius is so bright that the Romans believed it radiated extra heat toward Earth, adding to the Sun’s heat to generate those oppressive, sweltering summer days we know so well.

Slaughter and May and Wolf Theiss were the two Chairman Sponsors of the 2017 General Counsel Summit in Warsaw, and the individuals from both firms who actually chaired the proceedings – Jonathan Marks, Partner at Slaughter and May on Day 1 and Ron Given, Partner at Wolf Theiss on Day 2 – were kind enough to speak with us about their involvement at the event.

This year’s General Counsel Summit – the annual gathering of leading in-house counsel from across Central and Eastern Europe – convened in Warsaw, on June 1-2. 

The first two special issues of the CEE Legal Matters magazine this year – the annual Looking Back/Looking Forward issue in January and the CEE Corporate Counsel Handbook in April – were familiar to our readers. This one, however, dedicated to the 2017 CEE GC Summit and the CEE Legal Matters Market Makers Awards, is new.

English lawyer Daniel Cousens has been based in Linklaters’ Warsaw office since 2006. He advises international corporates, private equity sponsors, and strategic investors on M&A deals and inbound and outbound investments in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in Turkey, Ukraine, and Poland. Cousens co-heads Linklaters’ Turkey desk and is a member of the firm’s CEE and CIS teams. Before moving to Warsaw, he spent five years in Linklaters’ Moscow office. He studied English and French law at University College, London and Universite Aix-Marseille, and he speaks English, French, Russian, and Polish.

The Deal: In February 2017, CEE Legal Matters reported that CMS had advised Integer.pl S.A. on the investment made into the company by private equity fund Advent International. Clifford Chance advised Advent International on the deal.

As part of our year-long series of interviews with the bar associations presidents of CEE, we spoke recently with Maciej Bobrowicz, President of Poland’s National Council for Legal Advisors, at his office in Warsaw.

When I first moved to Poland about eight years ago from my native London I encountered a world different from the one where I had spent most of my life.

Who knows more about lawyers than other lawyers? In the Face-to-Face feature, we step back and allow private practitioners to sit down directly with in-house counsel to discuss their challenges, strategies, and solutions. 

In The Corner Office, we invite Senior and Managing Partners at law firms from across the region to share information about their careers, management styles, and strategies. For this issue, we asked them to describe their least favorite part of their jobs. 

On April 4, 2017, the Hungarian Parliament passed via an expedited procedure an amendment to the country’s Higher Education Act (Act CCIV of 2011 on National Higher Education) requiring, among other things, that foreign universities not based in the EU: (1) operate under a formal agreement between their country of origin and the Hungarian government; and (2) maintain campuses and offer degree programs in their country of origin. It was signed into law on April 10, 2017.

Last year the Hungarian Ministry of Justice prepared a new Attorney Act that would radically re-structure the current regulatory approach to in-house counsel. GCs of leading companies in Hungary were given the opportunity to share their views in the process, giving them a rare occasion to pause and collectively consider the nature of this branch of the legal profession which in its few decades of existence has grown so much in significance.

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo

Preserving confidentiality is always a top priority for a successful business, especially if you have an advanced R&D department. Taking into account the need to freely transfer information on the one hand and the strict necessity to preserve the safety of personal data and databases on the other, the issue of confidentiality becomes even more important.

Leasing of employees – a situation in which employment agencies hire employees and act as their formal employers and then lease them to perform actual work for their client companies – has become a frequent phenomenon in Serbia the past few years. 

In the present economical context, which often favors the migration of the employees from one company to another, the only tool left for employers seeking to prevent em-ployees from working for competitors after leaving their companies is to include non-competition clauses in employment contracts.