KCG Partners Law Firm

Firm Overview
KCG Partners Law Firm is a business law firm supported by strong litigation and tax advisory capabilities. The Firm combines the efficiency and economy of an elite local law firm with the in-depth knowledge of a global firm.

Over the last decades, we have established a strong reputation for the work we do. We have market leading practices in employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), industrial property development, employment, tax and regulatory/compliance.

Our clients are complex organizations with pressing legal issues that frequently challenge not only their businesses but also their entire industries. Dealing with these issues oftentimes leads to a drain on corporate resources.

We help our clients conserve these resources and generate value for their organizations by applying a collaborative approach aimed at jointly uncovering the most efficient path to tackling their issues.

Our clients receive support across their full-business life-cycle, from strategy formulation to value delivery. They involve us at all levels of their organizations, from the boardroom to their production fields.

We are proud that 90% of our work comes from repeat business and referrals, and 85% of our clients have used our services more than once. This is the result of our strategic choices to avoid over commitment, and prefer quality over quantity.

International Work
In addition to our own team, our clients are afforded immediate access to a carefully selected set of law firms to address their regional and international legal needs around the world.

KCG Partners is a member of Ally Law, a global legal network of 71 law firms and 2800 lawyers in 46 countries. Ally Law is committed to delivering high quality and responsive services, local business intelligence and value with global depth and reach.

Partners
DR. ESZTER KAMOCSAY-BERTA, LL.M. (Vienna)
Founding and Managing Partner, Attorney-at law

DR. LEVENTE CSENGERY, LL.M. (New York)
Founding Partner, Attorney-at-law

DR. GABRIELLA GÁLIK, Certified tax advisor
Founding Partner, Attorney-at-law

DR. RITA PÁRKÁNYI, MBA (Lyon)
Founding Partner, Attorney-at-law

DR. LÁSZLÓ MADÁK
Partner Attorney-at-law

Main Areas of Practice

Industrial Development

With our Industrial Development practice group, KCG Partners offers market-leading advice across a range of businesses for which industrial real estate is central to the transaction, including greenfield and brownfield investments. We bring together knowledge and experience from across our firm to provide our clients with comprehensive legal services in the following areas:

• land acquisition
• land development
• planning
• construction
• industrial licenses
• contract and claim management
• infrastructure, utility
• city development matters

Our clients rely on our long-lasting professional connections with regulatory agencies and governmental authorities to help them manage regulatory demands and navigate local environments. For example, we are proud to have helped obtain for some of our clients’ projects the status of “investment of high priority” from the Hungarian Government.

Tax Consulting Services

KCG Partners provides comprehensive legal services including sophisticated tax planning and deal structuring. Our clients regularly request our tax insights at the outset of their transaction planning due to our deep knowledge of tax law and our industry sector focus. Our areas of work include:

• Tax planning, risk advisory and tax investigations
• Transactional tax planning, deal structuring
• Tax optimizing for corporate reorganizations and group structuring
• Property investments and development projects
• Investment-related tax planning
• Transfer pricing
• Employment tax advising for executive compensation, employee benefits, secondment and global mobility
• Cross-border tax counselling

Employment

Our firm offers a comprehensive employment law practice aimed at supporting employers in managing the complexities of employer-employee relationships. We help employers navigate the challenging and frequently changing landscape of employment law, including:

• establishing and terminating employment relationships;
• realizing restructurings and large-scale lay-offs;
• dealing with collective disputes and trade union matters;
• establishing and operating Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs).
• advising on confidentiality undertakings, non-competition agreements and executive compensation schemes and
• managing HR compliance issues.

Our firm collaborates closely with HR leaders, department heads and boards of directors at large and complex organizations, for which effective employment law management is crucial to the success of their businesses.
With our preventive approach, our clients can take advantage of our guiding principle: where business risk is concerned, it is better to be safe than sorry. Beside it, our clients find special value in our employment practice due to our crisis management capabilities and track record in employment litigations.
Clients have praised our firm for their responsiveness, innovative solutions, and practical approach to problem-solving in employment law matters. Testimonials highlight our firm's effectiveness, in-depth knowledge, and ability to deliver exceptional legal services tailored to clients' needs.

Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)

Although Employee Stock Ownership Plans are an emerging field of law in Hungary, KCG Partners has already earned national recognition for its ESOP practice primarily due to our strong background in business law, including M&A, corporate, financial, regulatory and tax disciplines. Our attorneys are frequent lecturers and authors regarding corporate, tax and transactional issues relating to ESOPs and have been active leaders in this community for years. As a result, our firm can provide comprehensive assistance for both leveraged and non-leveraged deals throughout all stages of the ESOP business lifecycle: planning/structuring, implementing, financing, maintaining and redeeming.

Financial regulatory and capital markets

KCG Partners has extensive experience in the representation of financial institutions across the full spectrum of legal banking and financial regulatory matters. Our financial team assists international banks, fund management companies, investment advisers and custodians in the banking and finance area. Our clients involve us in the formation and registration of funds, mergers and dissolutions, and we provide representation before regulatory agencies, in connection with investigations and in litigation matters.

KCG Partners is also a well-known legal service provider in the Hungarian capital markets. Our clients rely on us to help them secure the right mix of financing in the equity and the debt capital markets. Our firm has extensive market knowledge and broad international experience at structuring and negotiating financing to meet the strategic goals of our clients.

M&A / Investments
KCG Partners has extensive experience in a diverse range of corporate, M&A and direct investment deals.

Clients request our assistance with transactions of all forms and sizes, including private M&A, joint ventures and corporate restructuring. They also rely on our advice for complex corporate governance, compliance and regulatory issues. We work with domestic, regional and global companies on all aspects of buying and selling companies and businesses, oftentimes involving a cross-border element.

We also focus on advising businesses and investors on direct investments in Hungary whether they be in agricultural and tourism projects or in highly complex regulated markets, such as energy, finance and insurance markets. Our clients rely on us to guide them in making appropriate investment choices for capitalizing on Hungary’s skilled workforce, appealing business environment, and attractive investment incentives. We are especially experienced in brownfield and greenfield investment projects in major business sectors.

IT/Data Protection

KCG Partners addresses our clients’ need to eliminate or mitigate risks deriving from unwittingly breaking international and local information protection laws. We have assembled a team of cybersecurity, privacy and data protection experts so that our clients can rely on our specialized knowledge and extensive experience to help them navigate the abundant EU and Hungarian legislations pertaining to data privacy and security. Our clients frequently request our assistance with the following matters:

• Drafting and auditing privacy and cyber security policies
• Preparing and responding to data security breaches
• Handling privacy-related claims and disputes
• Drafting privacy statements for online activities
• Advising on employee privacy (including counseling on monitoring employees and employee privacy relating to e-mail, internet, security cameras (CCTV), access control systems, etc.)
• Advising on financial privacy and healthcare privacy
• Advising on marketing policies (including advising on the information protection implications of direct marketing)
• Advising on data processing and data transfer agreements (including cross-border data transfer - both intra-group and with third parties)
• Executing data protection due diligence for M&A deals
• Advising on the legal interpretation and application of data protection laws by the data protection authorities
• Managing litigation related to cyber security, privacy and data protection

All of our clients have faced administrative and procedural difficulties arising from the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), applicable to all EU Member States since May 25, 2018. At KCG Partners, we allay the fears of our clients with our standardized assessment process through which our firm assists our clients to outline the necessary steps they can take to comply with the law.

ESG

ESG is derived from the initials of the words Environmental, Social and Governance. Each of these three words covers a pillar, the basic aim of which is to tackle the major challenges of the 21st century, such as the environment, global warming or social inequalities. We help companies navigate the challenging and ever-changing world of ESG by advising on all aspects of ESG issues and helping companies to comply with changing legislation, including:

• Monitoring of publications by supervisory bodies (EBF, ESA, ECB, MNB)
• Identification of ESG disclosure obligations
• Advice on the proper interpretation of and compliance with the NFRD, CSRD, CSDD and ESRS
• Advice on the correct interpretation of the CRR and Pillar 3 disclosures and on how to comply with disclosure obligations
• Proper interpretation of the SFDR and review of the content of PAI statements
• Issuing green bonds and assisting in meeting post-issuance obligations
• Compliance with the Directives on improving gender balance and pay transparency
• Compliance with the Taxonomy Regulation

ESG asks companies the following questions which we can help you answer:

• Did your company disclose all the information properly, which is necessary for the market participants to decide if your business activities are sustainable?
• Is the managing body of your company transparent and well structured?
• Is the allocation of tasks and responsibilities between managers transparent?
• Is your business model sustainable?
• Does your risk management policy manages properly physical and transitional risks?
• Is there an appropriate gender balance in the management?
• Are employees’ salaries based on transparent gender-neutral principles?
• Do you have enough capital to make your economic activity sustainable, and would you like to issue a green bond to do so?
• How much renewable energy does your company use?
• Would you like to issue green bonds to finance a geothermal well or a solar farm to produce and use renewable energy?

Wealth management

The field of wealth management basically covers two legal instruments, trusts and foundations, as possible solutions. Based on foreign, mainly German, models going back several decades, trusts have become established in Hungary in recent years and are increasingly used by local companies and individuals. Our office has many years of professional experience in the field of wealth management, during which time we have encountered many claims, aspects, various cross-border assets, and asset elements and have carried out many successful restructurings.

Wealth management structures can be used for a variety of purposes. The basic objectives are to keep assets intact across generations, to ensure the long-term financial well-being of the family, to protect against potential creditors, to address matrimonial property considerations and even to take advantage of possible tax benefits. KCG Partners can provide guidance in all of these areas by developing and implementing an individual wealth management plan and, if required, by participating in the operation of the wealth management. We also have the competitive advantage of providing tax planning and advisory services, an essential element in setting up the right plan for such a major step.

A common feature of the legal instruments is that in both cases the principal/founder transfers ownership to the asset manager, who manages the assets for the benefit of the named beneficiaries and may distribute the assets or their proceeds to them. The transfer of ownership does not, however, mean that in these fiduciary relationships, the principal/founder ceases to have the right to dispose of the property, since in both trusts and foundations the principal/founder and the asset manager (in the case of a foundation, for example, the trustee/trustees) may be the same person. This also means that the trustee can remove assets from his/her property (from bequests, risks) while retaining the right to dispose of them.

The advantage of a trust is that there is no legal minimum capital requirement and, as a general rule, no auditor is needed, but “only” the assets have limited legal personality, the conflict of interest rules are stricter and an MNB notification/authorisation is required. The advantages of a foundation are that it can be established for an indefinite period, there is no MNB notification/authorisation, the established trustee is a separate legal entity and the foundation itself can act as a trustee.

Dispute resolution

We provide dispute resolution services across a wide spectrum of our practice, including general commercial, employment, financial and contractual litigations, M&A-related disputes, litigations concerning tax matters, public & administrative law and real estate issues.

Our clients receive support across the full-business life-cycle of a litigation, including the pre-litigation stages, negotiations, strategy formulation and alternative dispute resolutions procedures. If the alternative dispute resolution does not lead to a solution we conduct litigation proceedings before national courts and arbitral tribunals.

Before disputes even arise, our team regularly performs due diligence and risk audits as the best ways to actually avoid the dispute. Our team is capable to prevent the escalation of the disputes and to resolve them effectively. We have dealt with a number of highly sensitive matters where we had to use our ability of crisis management. Our method is to be pro-active to take steps to influence the outcome of the case rather than just react to the events in the proceedings.

Global Mobilization
When our clients need to manage the relocation of key staff, KCG Partners provides them with both pre-decision counseling as well as departure and destination assistance relating to all permanent or short-term assignments. Our clients also rely on us to create relocation policies in accordance with their ongoing business strategies. We regularly assist clients with the following services:

• providing pre-decision counseling
• setting up cost and time estimates
• advising on and coordinating immigration and tax matters
• assisting with compensation planning
• providing destination services (e.g. lease advisory and tenancy management)

Memberships

• Ally Law Legal Network
• IBA (International Bar Association)
• AMCHAM (American Chamber of Commerce in Hungary)
• CCI France Hongrie (French Chamber of Commerce in Hungary)
• AILA (American Immigration Lawyers Association)
• INLA (International Nuclear Law Association)