IEL Elite

Overview

Ralf Peschek in Vienna leads the team at Wolf Theiss, which offers extensive coverage of Central Eastern Europe. Experts are also based in Belgrade, Bratislava, Bucharest, Budapest, Ljubljana, Kyiv, Prague, Sarajevo, Sofia, Tirana, Warsaw, and Zagreb.

The group is adept at taking on domestic issues, as well as major cross-border mandates. In addition, it regularly partners with leading international firms to assist with local matters.

In the past year, the firm has made a number of lateral hires to its Bucharest, Sofia, Vienna, Warsaw, and Zagreb employment teams. In addition, Teja Balažic Jerovšek in Ljubljana was made partner in September 2022, further strengthening the group’s offering.

Specialisms

The employment team is adept at taking on a variety of HR matters, and offers notable prowess in those that involve multiple Central Eastern European countries.

This know-how is regularly leveraged in multi-jurisdictional corporate transactions, as evidenced in its advice to Glovo on its €170m acquisition of Delivery Hero’s food delivery business in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, and Romania. This included employee transfers and a workforce restructuring. In addition, the team was also appointed to assist with Glovo’s acquisition of eHrana in Slovenia. 

The team’s expertise in business-critical issues was also demonstrated in the assistance provided by Ira Perić Ostojić in Zagreb to mobile app developer Mosaic Group. The team advised on immigration requirements associated with the direct hire of US employees and agency workers, data privacy concerns, and the developer’s establishment of permanent operations in Croatia.

In the past year, a key area of work for the team has been related to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In Poland, the Warsaw-based Agnieszka Nowak-Błaszczak advised humanitarian NGO International Rescue Committee on recruiting, hiring, and onboarding employees.

In Romania, a team in Bucharest, led by Adelina Iftime-Blagean, assisted cybersecurity company Sectigo with Romanian residency and right-to-work options for its Ukrainian employees.

The department also supports with in-house policies. For example, the team assisted Oracle with a re-design of its contractual structure in Romania, with a focus on temporary employees and the retention of contractors and freelancers, as well as post-covid-19 remote working arrangements.

The group demonstrates further prowess in landmark disputes. Vienna-based Matthias Unterrieder successfully acted for several chemicals companies on disputes relating to annual leave entitlement. Works councils claimed that employees working part-time or in shifts should not have their holiday entitlement calculated on a pro-rata basis. 

Additional areas of expertise include pensions and benefits, social security matters, and highly sensitive internal investigations.

Clients

Other key names

• Dora Gaži Kovačević (Croatia)
• Ileana Glodeanu (Romania)

Experts based in…

Albania, Austria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.