About

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last two years?

Considering that almost every large transaction naturally involves some sort of financing, as part of a leading bank’s in-house legal team, during the last couple of years, I had the chance to be involved in many large transactions and structured finance projects, occasionally involving multi-sourced debt financing structures, such as syndicated loans, including the refinancing of Bulgarian telecommunication company’s €400m senior secured notes as part of a syndicate of more than a dozen financial institutions.

I have also been involved in LBOs, such as financing for the acquisition of Telekom Albania by Albania Telecom Invest, a joint-venture of the businessmen Spas Roussev and Elvin Guri, from Cosmote, Greece (part of the Deutsche Telekom group). Portfolio sales and sales of individual assets, such as the lease of a significant portion of the site of the former Kremikovtsi plant in Sofia to a subsidiary of Austrian real estate investment company Soravia.

I also took part in several high-profile litigations such as disputes in Romania vis-à-vis the Romanian Agency for Payments and Intervention in Agriculture, and in the US involving several natural and legal persons such as the Bulgarian National Bank and the Bank of New York Mellon.

Finally, there have been a few complex regulatory matters which are also worth noting such as the recently completed comprehensive assessment performed by the European Central Bank.

How important are “soft skills” or personal attributes outside of technical legal skill, and which “soft skills” do you feel are most important for an in-house lawyer to possess?

Very important. An in-house lawyer should have excellent people skills and be an effective team player. Unlike in a law firm, where you are the product, in a corporation, you are a tiny piece of the puzzle; part of a much bigger team. As such, you need to interact with different departments on a daily basis.

Do you utilise any legal tech products, and if so, how do these assist you in your role?

We have been using several legal research tools for many years. Also, we have successfully implemented a few customised tech products for case and file management, reporting and verification. Finally, we occasionally use data sites providing cloud-based virtual data rooms.

What advice would you give to any peers or colleagues working in the Bulgarian market for the first time?

Broadly speaking – whether you are a non-Bulgarian in-house counsel who has just been assigned in the country or a partner in a foreign law firm coordinating a project with local implications – you should note that the Bulgarian legal framework hardly addresses the complexities of the modern business environment, albeit local laws are typically drafted in extensive detail. First-of-their-kind deals usually face specific delays generated mainly by legal challenges that require flexibility and innovative solutions.

What can law firms in Bulgaria, and the wider CEE region, do to win more business from you?

They should focus on their current clients first and provide great service. Then, when we need external counsel and start asking around or otherwise researching who does quality work in a specific area, their names will inevitably come up. Once we invite them to come in and make a pitch, my advice in that setting would be to try to invest some energy into really understanding our perspective on the particular matter.

FOCUS ON… BULGARIA

Almost three decades ago, Bulgaria begun its transition from a centrally planned system to a market-oriented one. Like other CEE countries, in the course of only a couple of months it applied the so-called “shock therapy”, encompassing, amongst other things, economic liberalisation and large-scale privatisation. These events marked the formation of modern-day law firms in Bulgaria, the most visionary of which still dominating the local legal market. Lots of these new law firms were established by former in-house counsel of the huge state-owned corporations, which had flourished until the end of the Communist era, or such with background from the governmental administration. This represented a shift of the legal professional’s perspective towards legal entrepreneurship, which was to later become prevalent amongst both prospective and actual representatives of the legal profession in the country. This led to a significant increase in the number of private practice attorneys, which number has steadily been growing ever since; especially of attorneys assisting businesses.

This growth in the external business law counsel reflects the needs of the companies back then.

Some 20 years ago, for instance, the default condition within an organisation was essentially to move all of the legal work outside, and the legal department would tend to be really small and functional, in the majority of cases comprising a single lawyer.

That has changed radically. More and more corporations are building small law firms within their organisations. Most of the work is no longer only managed internally and done by outside counsel but is predominantly handled in-house, especially such related to the core business of the company. After all, not only would the in-house team have the necessary technical skills and knowledge but would also naturally understand what is at the core of the corporation’s needs. These needs are harder to be communicated to outside counsel and should, in the best-case scenario, stay in.

In the past several years, there has been an
explosion of new laws and intensification of the regulatory enforcement environment. This certainly resulted in an increased need for sophisticated
legal advice, which is usually provided externally. However, this also helped companies see that
there is much more to the in-house function than detecting legal risks, mitigating them if possible,
and raising the awareness of management if mitigation is not possible for some reason. It made them realise the importance of compliance and
that companies need to optimise in a risk environment.

There is a perception that really talented people go to law firms and the less talented people go to the internal departments. If that has ever been true, I don’t believe it still is. From my experience here, at Fibank, and as a former external consultant to many other corporations, I firmly believe the quality of in-house lawyers is every bit as strong as the quality of attorneys in the large law firms. I can only anticipate that the pace of change is just going to increase going forward and hope that great lawyers will keep an open eye at companies as a viable alternative for their professional development.