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Clifford Chance takes over Badea, Georgescu lawyers

20.06.2006, 20:59 16

Clifford Chance, the world's biggest law firm, has teamed with the Badea, Georgescu&Asociatii law firm to enter the Romanian market, whose annual value is estimated at 100 million euros, in a bid to achieve faster growth rate than projected by mature foreign markets.
"This is a natural progression of the relationship we've had with Clifford Chance. Ever since 2002, when we set up the firm, we've focused on involvement in multinational transactions and in many cases we've worked together. We'd been in talks for an alliance for some time," stated Daniel Badea, managing partner.
Michael Cuthbert, managing partner with Clifford Chance for Central and Eastern Europe, stated, "Our new office in Bucharest will be a starting point for developing Clifford Chance's presence in the region and will improve our ability to assist global customers with an interest in Southeastern Europe". Clifford Chance has over 3,300 lawyers globally, with 29 offices in 20 countries, accumulating annual revenues of over 1.4 billion euros.
Daniel Badea, 31, and Nadia Georgescu, 33, have been working on the business law market for ten years. They have also worked with global firms over the last several years in London. The firm had two partners and 20 lawyers and generated annual revenues estimated at 2-3 million euros per annum. Badea chose not to comment on this issue.
Now, the new entity will have 3 partners, the third of which is a Clifford Chance partner.
"We did not that great a visibility on the domestic market, because our customers were largely foreign ones," mentioned Badea. Our plan now is to grow organically, we plan to take 2-3 lawyers from the market to strengthen our position on certain segments, but we do not intend to team up with another firm," said Badea.
Our focus will be on market segments set to witness spectacular growth over the forthcoming years and where we hold a solid position: real estate, banking-finance, mergers and acquisitions, as well as private equity," he says.
Badea was this year involved in the biggest real estate deal on the market, the acquisition of the Charles de Gaulle Plaza office building (the headquarters of Vodafone and Raiffeisen Bank) for more than 80 million euros by the investment fund Accession Fund.
Last year, Badea, Georgescu were lawyers in the largest corporate bond offering by a Romanian entity, when BCR sold bonds worth 500 million euros on the foreign market.
This year, the firm is part of the syndicate led by Credit Suisse First Boston, which will sell 40% of RomTelecom stock in the autumn, in a transaction thought to be worth over 1 billion euros.

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