The Lawyer: M&A Boom in the CEE: how firms are harnessing the trend

With Europe facing significant political headwinds including elections and a new US administration, will buyers and sellers become risk-averse? And why have international law firms dominated M&A tables for so long? The Lawyer’s CEE experts discuss.

Our Deputy Managing Partner, Ștefan Damian says:

„Like it or not, politics influences the economy, in particular the economy in CEE. I’m not only referring to Brexit but also to the political events that will come along in 2017 – elections in the EU (Germany, Italy and France, the last two having strong parties with anti-EU platforms) that could make countries focus more on their internal markets while companies from
these countries will probably wait for the results of the elections before making any substantial expansions plans.

The US will also be, at least for Romania, an important element; I mean, the Trump administration’s policies in relation to this region. The situation in Ukraine should be a cause for concern for the region, too.

In addition, economically, prospects are quite dull – EU GDP growth is close to zero, Greece has never-ending financial problems and there are problems with the entire banking sector in Italy.

Ironically, notwithstanding all the above, Romania looks politically and economically pretty good and stable: economic growth seems to be continuing at a high rate; we have just completed Parliamentary elections; and the winning coalition and new government seem to be strong and stable with a focus on economic development.

However, we don’t have a buffer against the rest of the world unfortunately, and if the world – and especially the EU – suffers, we will suffer.

All in all I’m moderately optimistic about 2017. We’ll probably see an increase in M&A activity compared with 2016, but it will definitely not be a boom”.

To read the entire interview, please go to: https://www.thelawyer.com/issues/30-january-2017/ma-boom-cee-firms-harnessing-trend/