Stankovic & Partners (NSTLAW)

The firm: Established in 2010 by the attorney Nenad Stankovic, Stankovic & Partners (NSTLAW) is a full-service firm located in Belgrade, Serbia, with a team of experts who advise multinational corporations and Serbian and Montenegrin companies, often acting in co-operation with well known international law firms.

Most of the firm’s lawyers have previously held senior positions at highly respected international and national firms. They also often speak at major international conferences, and contribute to leading national and international publications.

Stankovic & Partners is now well established as one of the leading commercial firms in the Serbian market, providing advice on banking and finance, corporate and M&A, restructuring and insolvency, commercial and regulatory, competition/antitrust, real estate, dispute resolution, privatisation, public procurement, intellectual property, capital markets, energy, mining and infrastructure, employment, tax, telecoms and technology.

The firm’s clients include many leading global corporations as well as some of the largest Serbian and Montenegrin companies and financial services firms, entrepreneurs and national local government institutions.

The firm has received a number of national and international accolades, including recommendations by Chambers & Partners’ Europe and Global Guides, The Legal 500 EMEA, and IFLR.

The firm’s international links include membership of Nextlaw Global Referral Network, the largest legal referral network in the world, and the Legal Network Alliance, a carefully selected global alliance of independent law firms.

The firm’s lawyers have worked with the respected international legal publications Getting the Deal Through since 2012, preparing its annual M&A overview for the Republic of Serbia.

Stankovic & Partners acts for clients carrying out business in Montenegro in co-operation with Kastravoic Law Office in Podgorica.

Areas of practice: At Stankovic & Partners (NSTLAW) banking and finance is a core area of practice. The firm has considerable experience of acting for major international and domestic financial institutions, as agents, senior lenders or syndicate members, as well as for borrowers from a variety of sectors, on a range of financing transactions. These include corporate and investment grade lending, leveraged and acquisition finance, asset finance and leasing, real estate development finance and cross-border intercompany loans.

In addition, with their acclaimed knowledge of the Serbian energy market, the team boasts award-winning expertise in project finance, as well as an impressive track record of success in big-ticket debt restructuring and reorganisation. On the borrower side, the firm assists clients with the financing of acquisitions and mergers, loans for funding new equipment or working capital, and a host of other projects. In addition, Stankovic & Partners offers a wealth of expertise in financial regulatory issues, while their experienced dispute resolution team has notable skill in resolving problems and enforcing security.

The office has developed in-depth expertise in all aspects of Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian competition and antitrust law. The firm advises clients from a wide range of sectors on obtaining merger clearance, handling complex processes from start to finish. They also advise their international clients on distribution and franchising networks, conducting antitrust audits and ensuring that their commercial practices remain compliant with local law. State aid and public procurement also form significant elements of Stankovic & Partners’ practice, and the firm has considerable experience providing training to key business personnel on all aspects of competition regulation and practices.

When contentious issues arise, including cartel allegations and follow-on claims, the competition group works closely with the firm’s large and highly regarded dispute resolution team to represent clients before the competition authorities and courts of Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The firm enjoys a particularly fast-growing reputation in the intellectual property arena, where their sizeable dedicated IP and data protection team supports domestic and international clients on everything from intensive portfolio management and IP prosecution and protection strategies, to advice on exploiting image rights and IP due diligence in the context of some of the region’s largest M&A transactions and financings. The group is also widely admired for its expertise in data protection and privacy matters, where they assist a number of well-known international clients with data project and cross-border data transfer, and on advertising and marketing, having, for example, prepared the sponsorship agreements relating to the two biggest music festivals in Serbia as well as the Serbian Premier League and the national football team.