Interview with: Mr. Ömer Faruk Hansu, Founding and Managing Partner

What do you see as the main points that differentiate Hansu Law Firm from your competitors?

Our Law Firm has celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. With our dedicated lawyers having vast international work experience and foreign language knowledge, we will continue to develop and implement solutions for the most complex and sophisticated legal issues that our clients encounter in their local business activities as well as cross-border transactions around the globe. Therefore, our mission is to combine high level of technical expertise with our sectorial knowledge and to offer tailor-made and pragmatic legal assistance to our clients in Turkey and abroad.

In addition to our vast experience in all major practice areas, we are one of the leading law firms dealing with the largest number of tax law related disputes in Turkey and have achieved to gain precedent decisions in legal disputes before Turkish courts. Our extensive tax experience enables us to assist our clients in all corporate, finance, real estate and M&A transactions, to identify their risks and opportunities and help them to develop pragmatic and commercial structures that maximize tax effectiveness. In this context, we provide detailed advice on tax inspections and tax disputes and offer the most beneficial solution to our clients by looking through a broad perspective.

Furthermore, the founding partners of Hansu Law Firm have in-depth technical knowledge in all major business sectors including energy, chemicals, petroleum and construction. We are experienced in minimizing the possible legal risks that can occur in any project related to energy or construction due to our vast technical knowledge and sectorial perspective.

Our law firm is also one of the leading law firms with special focus on the establishment organized industrial zones, development of energy, tourism, health projects on public and municipal lands for almost a decade that we assist both individuals and companies as well as sectorial associations and the public authorities. Therefore, we believe that we have a superior experience on project development, project finance, development of the respective partnership models and establishment of the company.

To sum up, the main points that distinguish our law firm from its competitors are the experience we gained from our involvement in public and private sector’s collaborative projects, corporate/commercial and intellectual property expertise combined with our experience in tax law, need-based working principle and superior experience in risk assessment.

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

Undoubtedly, the severe economic effects of Covid 19 pandemic will also be decisive in the next 12 months. Despite that, there will be continuous investments in energy, IT and e-commerce, transportation and logistics sector.

Whilst the usage of digital tools and channels before Covid 19 is a matter of choice for both consumers and companies, it has now become a necessity for both individuals and companies. Businesses will be able to reach consumers from other countries through technological tools by increasing investment in automation and artificial intelligence. Since digital services and e-commerce will increase significantly, law firms practicing in technology-related areas will attract more attention. We believe that our clients from transportation sector and other participants of the supply chain as well as healthcare and medicine sector will also play a major role within the next 12 months. For that reason, we continue to provide comprehensive legal services to our local and international operating clients in the areas of e-commerce, IT, energy and transportation and logistics.

Restructuring is of course is a major area where clients are looking for assistance, since many companies negatively affected by the current situation need to start bankruptcy and concordat procedures.

Another legal area that practitioners will focus on is contracts law. The parties will request that their agreements are revised in accordance with the current market situation due to changing balance of interests. Thanks to our many years of expertise, we offer our clients comprehensive advice on the negotiation and drafting of commercial contracts based on their commercial need and strategy.

In addition, the number of lawsuits before state courts and arbitration institutions as well as the enforcements and bankruptcy proceedings will increase in the upcoming period due to the failure of the parties to fulfil their obligations arising from the commercial contracts, the loan contracts of banks, financial institutions and lease agreements.

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

We have established country-based desks to offer tailor-made legal support to our Turkish and foreign clients in all of their cross-border transactions. In this context, our UK, German, French and UAE desks consist of lawyers that have extensive networks and possess in-depth experience with foreign business cultures and legal systems. Our excellent local contacts enable us to provide expert legal support to our clients wherever they do business within Europe and beyond. When working with our colleagues in foreign jurisdictions, we typically assume the legal project management and coordinate as the primary point of contact between our client and the teams of lawyers abroad. Thus, while providing legal support, we create individualized teams both from Turkey and abroad by prioritizing the special needs and demands of our clients and provide the highest quality of consultancy services both in and outside our jurisdiction.

On the other hand, our law firm works closely with sectorial associations and academics in relevant departments of the universities, in particular in the areas of technology production, digital retail and e-commerce. In this context, we offer a high level of legal service to our clients by combining our technical knowledge with legal expertise.

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

Of course it is. As mentioned before, the use of digital tools with Covid 19 pandemic has become a necessity. For this reason, we developed the technological infrastructure of our law firm and increased our investments in order to provide our clients with same quality of legal assistance offered before the epidemic period. We believe with these investments we established a strong communication channel with our clients operating both locally and globally.

We are among few Turkish law firms that follow and implement the digitalization in their daily business for over a decade. Since 2011 we are using a special software program to collect and archive all case/court files, accounting documents, client contact details, all correspondences provided by our clients. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have developed the technological infrastructure of our law firm and increased our investments in technological tools in order to provide our clients same high quality legal support 24/7 and even in the most urgent situations.

Again, we continuously quickly inform our clients about all sectorial and legal developments, thus ensuring that they take the necessary precautions and manage their business in accordance with the recent legislations.

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

We would like to give you a couple of practical examples of our law firm’s contribution to a broad spectrum of local and international clients from various business sectors including:

• Preparation of a legal status report and conducting legal due diligence as well legal assistance in one of the largest globally operating energy distribution company’s privatization tender
• Preparation of a risk report in terms of debt collection ability and preparation of all necessary litigation files on behalf of an international operating client in a tender process for the sale of receivables with the amount of approximately 1 billion USD by the Saving Deposit Insurance Fund (SDIF)
• Establishment of a thermal power plant on approximately 700.000 m2 of public land and legal advice on the development phase in Adana/Ceyhan in Turkey as energy hub in the entire Middle East
• Representing the transferee in the process of Turkey’s largest commercial real estate project’s acquisition and legal assistance in all stages including construction
• Representing the transferee in the transfer of Turkey’s leading spring water producer with the largest production capacity and representation of this company in all business transactions
• Legal representation of a Dubai-based company that sells the highest number of real estate projects in Turkey to foreign investors
• Legal advice on the development and operation stages for the largest mixed real estate project in Turkey that includes a shopping mall, a hotel, a hospital and private residences
• Legal services in all zoning and construction issues of a large-scale real estate project to be carried out in Bosporus
• Legal advice on the enactment of the Transition Regulation that establishes the basis of electronic infrastructure communication as well as legal representation of the leading company in electronic infrastructure communication sector that acquired necessary permission to pass the communication lines through the Bosporus and Dardanelles for the first time
• Legal advice on tender proceedings for highway, railway, airport and sea port projects including preparation of necessary application files for tender participation, representation of our clients and legal advice on tender contracts
• Legal advice of a client on the acquisition of approximately 20 solar power plants including temporary / final acceptance and operation of the respective solar power plants
• Development of various real estate projects and drafting necessary construction agreement in return for revenue share

In addition our law firm has vast experience in the area of tax law and provide comprehensive legal advice to clients from the chemicals and petroleum sector as well as sectorial associations with an asset size of 1 billion USD. In this context, our dedicated lawyers have in-depth expertise on supply license granted by the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA) and the defence against administrative fines as well as license revocation by EMRA.

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three years’ time?

Every business and individual seeks for stability and strategic direction, not only from their law firms but also from every partner they cooperate with. We always offer strategic directions in line with our clients’ vision, plans and goals. In this context, while providing legal services, we also show them the most practical solution that takes all compliance and regulatory issues on the basis of our clients’ interests in their investment and business strategies.

In the upcoming three years, as Hansu Law Firm, we aim to expand our international business network while maintaining our philosophy of providing the highest quality service to our clients. Our network with law firms from major European countries will increase and we aim to expand our cooperation with expert lawyers in the United Kingdom, Germany and France in order to offer our clients a unique one-stop shop to support them in achieving their commercial strategies around the globe.

In accordance with our digitalization process, we will continue to provide our clients with high quality legal and consultancy services based on their commercial and practical needs by ensuring that our law firm plays a leading role in this field in the upcoming years.