International law firm Salans has consolidated its real estate in the emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe by poaching of a high-profile team from rival Clifford Chance. Pawel Debowski - rated as a 'Band Star' by legal bible Chambers Europe - and core members of his Clifford Chance team in Poland began work for Salans recently.
International law firm Salans has consolidated its real estate in the emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe by poaching of a high-profile team from rival Clifford Chance. Pawel Debowski - rated as a 'Band Star' by legal bible Chambers Europe - and core members of his Clifford Chance team in Poland began work for Salans recently.
Eric Rosedale and Evan Lazar, co-chairs of the Salans Global Real Estate Group said: 'This move reflects our long term commitment to Emerging Europe. It will be another important step in building one of the leading cross-border real estate practices.' The pair told PropertyEU that Salans is growing in other regions as well. 'We are growing our practices in Western Europe, with a particular focus on Paris and Frankfurt. Outside of Europe we are building our real estate team in Greater China where we have offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.'
The firm is seeing an increase in M&A in the real estate sector. 'Activity has clearly picked up in Europe this year - about 30% in Western Europe and probably triple that in Central and Eastern Europe (and Poland in particular) compared to 2009. Whether or not this activity continues to grow in a straight line will vary from market to market and be influenced by wider macro-economic forces,' Rosedale said. And the investment market is still lagging. Rosedale: ‘The core of our business is transactional work and our business follows transaction volumes as they rise and fall from market to market. While many industry experts expected a large volume at distressed real estate work, it never really materialized. As a result we have focused on asset and operational issues for our clients as well as dispute resolution and restructuring work as our markets recover.’
The deals that do happen are taking longer. Lazar: 'The basic legal aspects of our deals during the downturn have not changed much especially given the dearth of truly distressed deals. Transactions are generally taking longer to close and there is probably a slightly higher rate of aborted deals. There is also more attention being paid to insolvency risks.'
