Kinstellar announces the promotion of three new Partners and two new Counsel
June 2017 - Kinstellar is delighted to announce the promotions to Partner of Iustinian Captariu and Remus Codreanu in Bucharest and Ákos Nagy in Budapest, and the promotions to Counsel of Zsuzsa Csiki in Bucharest and Olena Kuchynska in Kyiv.
Partner
Iustinian Captariu, Bucharest: Iustinian Captariu has over 10 years of experience advising clients on competition, energy, joint ventures and other transactional work. He focuses on all aspects of competition law and related areas including abuse of dominant position, cartels, merger control, joint ventures, dawn raids and unfair competition, as well as on energy transactions and other energy matters.
Iustinian is currently leading the firm’s Competition and Energy practices in Romania.
Iustinian provides advice to important local and international clients on significant investigations conducted by the Competition Council in Romania. His experience covers a wide variety of sectors, including energy, private pension funds, retail, pharma, financial, automotive, and insurance. He also represents clients in dawn raids and before courts of law during appeals against sanctions imposed by the competition authorities.
Iustinian has extensive experience in the energy, power and gas sectors, advising clients on restructurings, acquisitions and all types of regulatory matters. Iustinian has also advised on important acquisitions and joint ventures in Romania and across the region, such as the acquisition in 2016 by MET group of the Romanian power supplier Repower, one of the leading players on the Romanian electricity market.
Iustinian has constantly received recognition from legal directories and praise from clients for being a trusted advisor. In the 2017 editions, clients refer to him as ‘practical, responsive and an excellent communicator’ (Chambers Europe).
Remus Codreanu, Bucharest: Remus Codreanu has over 13 years of broad and in-depth experience advising and representing Romanian and international companies active in various sectors, including IT, energy, retail, life sciences, construction, automotive, forestry & agriculture and chemicals, His expertise spans several practice areas, including dispute resolution, white-collar crime, employment law, administrative law (including public procurement), intellectual property, insolvency and media law.
Over the years, Remus has advised and represented important local and international clients in contentious matters, including litigation & arbitration matters, before all levels of courts and other local and international jurisdictional bodies, including Romanian prosecution offices and related criminal courts.
Remus is a diligent, talented, credible and successful litigator who has taken significant strides since joining Kinstellar. He has positioned himself as a key pillar of both the Dispute Resolution and White-Collar Crime practices in Bucharest and has proven to be a valuable and reliable resource for other important practice areas, including Public Procurement, Employment and Intellectual Property. His very high success rate in dispute resolution matters, his hard work, and his commitment to the firm are impressive.
Before joining Kinstellar as an Associate in 2010, Remus worked as an independent litigation lawyer and as Head of the Legal Department of Romanian Public Television. Remus graduated from Bucharest University, Faculty of Law. He has published several articles in prestigious Romanian legal magazines and completed a PhD with a thesis on IP infringements.
Ákos Nagy, Budapest: Ákos focuses primarily on corporate and M&A transactions and has more than 12 years of significant, broad-based experience advising on asset and share deals, mergers, MBOs, joint venture investments, minority and majority investments and corporate restructurings.
Moreover, since 2014, Ákos has played a key role in the firm’s Compliance, Risk and Sensitive Investigations (CRSI) and White Collar Crime (WCC) practices, working on complex and highly sensitive matters, and bringing consistent and valuable contributions to the know-how development of these practices. Sensitive commercial matters have become one of Ákos’ focus points, in addition to servicing his existing corporate clientele and advising on M&A transactions, with an emphasis on strategic investors active in the automotive, industrial and pharma sectors.
Important clients that Ákos has been advising recently include: TEVA, Johnson Controls, Energizer, Ibiden, Nordic, MVM, Yanfeng Hungary, Nitrogénművek, CBRE, Rubik Ventures, Chapelhill and Hamburger Hungária.
Ákos has built a sterling reputation on the market, as evidenced by his recognition as a recommended practitioner in the Corporate and M&A practice by the international legal directories Chambers Europe, Legal 500 and IFLR1000. In their 2017 editions, clients comment: ‘He provides the best quality of work and is easy to work with.’ (Chambers Europe), and further describe him as: ‘very service-oriented’ and ‘professional’ (Legal 500).
Ákos has been with Kinstellar since its inception and previously with its Budapest team (then as Linklaters) since 2004, when he started his career. Ákos graduated from the University of Debrecen and holds a degree in European law studies from Leiden University. He completed advanced postgraduate education in the field of information communication at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs (Hungary). Ákos also spent six months at Linklaters’ London office on secondment in 2008 in the Corporate Department working on numerous M&A and capital market matters.
Counsel
Zsuzsa Csiki, Bucharest: Zsuzsa Csiki has over nine years of experience advising Romanian and international companies on corporate mergers and acquisitions and other cross-border transactions/restructurings, covering various sectors, such as financial services, banking, automotive, construction, forestry, retail and technology, media and telecommunications. Her expertise also extends to capital markets transactions and financial regulatory matters, coordinating teams locally and cross-border.
With an impressive track record and strong interpersonal and organisational skills, Zsuzsa advised and coordinated several important clients on significant transactions in Romania and on a cross-border basis, such as the divestiture by Alpha Bank of its shares in the Chisinau-listed Moldavian bank, Victoriabank S.A., to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and Nestlé on the Romanian law aspects of its global joint venture with R&R Ice Cream, a leading UK-based ice cream producer owned by the French private equity fund, PAI Partners.
Zsuzsa is building her reputation on the market in Romania and abroad as a corporate and M&A lawyer and as a specialist in all aspects of financial regulatory advice and capital markets transactions. She has become the ‘go-to’ person in the office in these areas.
Olena Kuchynska, Kyiv: Olena has more than 10 years of experience as a lawyer. Though her primary focus is on M&A and corporate, corporate restructurings and equity capital markets, she is also building a reputation as an energy lawyer. Last year, the firm decided to support the establishment of an energy practice in the Kyiv office with Olena in charge of its development. In the course of this year, the Kyiv team has been advising a number of the largest local and international clients in the energy and infrastructure sectors on corporate and energy regulatory matters.
Olena joined Kinstellar in 2016 as a Managing Associate. Prior to that, she worked with the Kyiv office of Baker McKenzie for eight years and The Silecky Firm PC for one year. Olena started her career as a project officer at the OSCE Project Co-ordinator’s office in Kyiv. Olena received her law degree from the National University of Ostroh Academy (Ostroh, Ukraine) in 2002 and earned an LL.M. degree from the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary) in 2003.
Jason Mogg, Firm Managing Partner, comments: ‘’We are fortunate to have Ákos, Iustin, Remus, Olena and Zsuzsa as part of our team. These promotions are in recognition of their importance to our firm and its future and to their commitment to delivering exceptional value to our clients. On behalf of the Partners and the entire firm, I warmly congratulate them! We look forward to their leadership and continuing contributions to the firm.’’
For further information please contact Adela Ene at +40 21 307 1639 / .