International law firm Noerr, together with Vienna-based Austrian law office Arnold, have advised Signa Retail on the sale of Kika’s Eastern European business to XXXLutz. The parties signed the contracts on the sale of the 22 locations in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia on April 26, 2019. The transaction has included both the operational retail business with over 1,500 employees and the 22 properties.
Founded by Austrian entrepreneur René Benko, the SIGNA Group is a privately managed, European holding company focusing on the real estate, retail and media sector. The company is one of Europe’s leading real estate investors with a portfolio of unique assets in prime locations valued at over €14 billion, and a further €8 billion in assets under development. With approx. 45,000 employees and over €7.5 billion in sales - of which approx. €750 million are generated online alone - it operates well-known trading companies
The Arnold Rechtsanwälte team was led by managing partner Nikolaus Arnold and Georg Huber (Senior Associate). The team also included Bernhard Vetter von der Lilie (Partner), Thomas Raubal, Roman Gruber, Christoph Jelemensky and Felix Fisecker.
Noerr’s CEE team advising on the transaction was led by partners Zoltan Nadasdy (Budapest), Gabriel Popa (Bucharest), Barbara Kusak (Prague), Jörg K Menzer (CEE managing partner) and Ákos Bajorfi (Senior Associate, Budapest). The Noerr team also included: Edina Schweizer (Partner, Budapest), Ludek Chvosta (Counsel, Prague), Martin Tupek (Counsel, Bratislava) and Associates, Eszter Hegedűs, Szilvia Andriska, Timea Tompa (Budapest); Adrian Georgescu-Banc, Oana Piticas (Bucharest); Michal Janicek, Stepanka Havlikova (Prague); Tomas Zaborsky, Martin Baraniak (Bratislava).
Jörg K Menzer, CEE Regional Managing Partner commented: „We are delighted to have worked with an outstanding Austrian law firm on a truly complex cross-border transaction, which required team-work geographically and also multi-disciplinary skills from all our advisors. This is evidence of Noerr becoming a regional M&A force on multi-jurisdictional matters”
XXXLutz was represented by CHSH on the purchase and by Wolf Theiss on the merger clearance process.
