Austria’s banking system was rocked by the near-collapse of Hypo Group Alpe Adria and its resulting nationalisation. Legal Business looks at the law firms called in to save the country’s sixth-largest lender, and the lucrative mandates picked up by Austria’s top legal advisers in response to recent events
For Austria’s law firms, it looked like party time when BayernLB acquired Hypo Group Alpe Adria (HGAA) back in 2007. HGAA was a top player in Balkan markets such as Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. BayernLB expected the profits to roll in and HGAA’s IPO was eagerly anticipated.
By the following year, €1.7bn-worth of write-downs and loan losses had been generated, and HGAA found itself being propped up by the Austrian state.
Cut to the end of 2009 when the government took over HGAA completely. The Austrian state and HGAA’s former owners agreed to provide E1.5bn of capital, an agreement based on a proposal put forth by the various legal and financial advisers caught up in the deal. The purchase price was a mere E1, and necessitated writing off BayernLB’s E3.7bn investment. The political backlash in Austria was fierce. HGAA was previously majority-owned by the Austrian state of Carinthia, and its controversial, now-deceased, far-right governor Jörg Haider had been boasting about Carinthia’s fortunes after the bank’s disposition.
Flying the flag
It wasn’t just the banks that needed saving. In August 2008, the Austrian Federal Government issued a privatisation mandate for debt-ridden Austrian Airlines. Deutsche Lufthansa was the favoured bidder but was only prepared to take on the airline if Austria’s government swallowed a large portion of its €900m debt. Eventually, the government caved in and, in December of the same year, Lufthansa acquired Österreichische Industrieholding (ÖIAG)’s shares in Austrian Airlines. By May 2009 over 75% of the remaining shareholders had accepted the German flag-carrier’s bid for the 42% stake.
Approval from Brussels of €500m in state aid was also required, and a separate row erupted between the European Commission and Lufthansa over routes between Vienna and other European cities. Concerned about a lack of competition, the Commission demanded the surrender of Lufthansa flights in and out of Austria. The German airline claimed the merger would not make economic sense under such conditions and the transaction risked falling apart. Austrian Airlines announced that it would need a fresh €1bn if the takeover failed and that the airline would still need a new partner. Austria’s takeover authorities were asked to extend the deadline by a month to 31 August for the fulfilment of the Commission’s conditions. This in itself marked considerably new legal territory in Austria.
Lufthansa eventually accommodated the Commission’s concerns, and both the restructuring aid and takeover were approved, with the privatisation’s transparency, openness and fairness all confirmed by the Commission. Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati (CHSH) advised the Republic of Austria, ÖIAG and Austrian Airlines during the takeover. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer acted for Lufthansa.
The deal sparked a particularly complex legal situation at a delicate time for the airline industry generally. Many hope that the takeover will lead to the reorganisation of Europe’s airline industry. CHSH co-managing partner Edith Hlawati says: ‘Because of its complexity, this transaction will become a reference case. We are pleased that it was successfully concluded with our help.’
Stepping up
The nationalisation deal was brokered in an atmosphere of emergency and executed in swift fashion. Acting for the state of Austria were its lawyers Finanzprokuratur, while leading CEE law firm Wolf Theiss, together with Viennese-based legal practice Kosch & Partner and KPMG International, acted as advisers to HGAA in its negotiations with the government and the bank’s shareholders. Kosch & Partner and KPMG assisted with the preparation of various recapitalisation scenarios, but it was Wolf Theiss, through lead partner Markus Heidinger, that provided the bulk of the advice to HGAA.
Heidinger had already advised HGAA on various strategic issues, such as the bank’s receipt of a capital injection from the state at the end of 2008 through the subscription of participating capital for E900m. As to why Wolf Theiss was selected, Heidinger points to the firm’s know-how and the leading market position the practice has in banking, corporate, regulatory capital, EU competition law and restructuring, coupled with a positive working relationship going back some years.
‘The deal was especially challenging,’ Heidinger says. Trying to avoid the insolvency of a leading CEE banking group and at the same time lead HGAA’s board of directors through such a difficult time tested the firm’s mettle. Naturally, ‘HGAA’s directors expected full-on legal support, and without the contribution of so many teams the outcome would not have been successful,’ Heidinger adds.
As for BayernLB, it was Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Vienna office that was mandated when HGAA ran into difficulties. ‘I had been monitoring the situation for a while and approached BayernLB,’ says Willibald Plesser, lead partner on the deal and CEE/CIS regional co-head.
‘I do not believe the government would have let HGAA collapse. It was too important.’
Willibald Plesser, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Some onlookers were surprised that Austrian firm Dorda Brugger Jordis, a frequent adviser to BayernLB, was not instructed. Dorda had already acted on the acquisition of HGAA by BayernLB in 2007, but the restructuring and sale of HGAA was expected to raise legal questions under EU law, and Freshfields’ Berlin and Brussels offices had recently worked for BayernLB on the state aid side. As such, many believe that it made sense to retain the firm on HGAA’s restructuring for synergy reasons.
Freshfields was delighted to pick up such a significant mandate, which encompassed a range of financial, corporate and state aid issues. HGAA was in a vulnerable position, and the approaching 31 December year end made for a tight schedule that required the involvement of several parties with different interests. The Austrian Minister of Finance, the state of Bavaria (BayernLB’s majority owner), BayernLB itself as majority shareholder, insurance company GRAWE-Styrian and the holding company of the state of Carinthia all became entangled in a series of intense night-time and weekend negotiations. Plesser himself moved his holidays to ensure that the deal was pushed forward successfully.
HGAA’s nationalisation attracted a great deal of media attention, with TV crews never far away during the negotiations. ‘It was a hectic time,’ Plesser says. ‘And given HGAA’s financial condition, it was one of the most complex and challenging projects I have worked on in the past two years.’
Having Austria’s top legal advisers on board did not guarantee the bank’s rescue. HGAA was in a particularly bad state and the Austrian government needed strong reassurances that the bank had a solid business plan as regards its future liquidity position and prospective financing.
Plesser prefers not to dwell on what might have happened if the talks had failed. ‘Had the bank’s nationalisation not taken place by 31 December, I do not believe the government would have let HGAA collapse. It was too important to Austria’s banking system,’ he says. Certainly, all the parties involved in the mandate should feel satisfied with the achievement. The agreement not only allowed for a sustainable restructuring of the bank, but also prevented the anticipated disruption of both Austrian and southeastern European financial markets.
But the party’s not quite over. The restructuring plan is still being thrashed out and certain state aid issues are outstanding. The 2008 E900m recapitalisation scheme did not require individual notification to Brussels, as it was covered by the general Austrian aid scheme approved by Brussels the same year, but the additional funds provided by the Austrian state and former shareholders as part of the nationalisation scheme necessitated individual notification. Provisional approval was obtained in December 2009, but final clearance is subject to the European Commission’s approval of the restructuring plan. Guenter Bauer, competition and antitrust head at Wolf Theiss, is acting for HGAA before the Commission. ‘The Commission’s requirements need to be reflected in the restructuring plan before clearance is granted,’ he says. This is expected to occur within six months of the date of provisional clearance.
Getting together
The much-anticipated arrival of class actions in Austria is once again on the agenda in light of the crisis-related legal proceedings faced by banks and other financial institutions further to fraudulent investment schemes such as Madoff. Class actions appeal to some companies because they will be better equipped to defeat large numbers of claimants, while the plaintiffs will eagerly look forward to promising settlement levels.
But some, including Peter Polak, managing partner at Fiebinger, Polak, Leon & Partner (FPLP), expect such a powerful instrument to cause problems for large corporations, which could in turn produce disproportionate issues in a small country like Austria, where the underlying insurance market is not large enough to distribute the cost of class actions. Florian Kremslehner, Schönherr’s dispute resolution head, welcomes class actions if their intention is to give a forum to claimants as well as offering the opportunity to financial institutions to settle mass claims at a reasonable cost. ‘But we need to be careful that we don’t copy the US model of having all sorts of spurious claims picked up and dragged through the courts,’ he says. Otto Dietrich, a partner at KWR Karasek Wietrzyk, agrees: ‘This is still a foreign instrument to Austrian law and could impact on areas that we just can’t imagine right now.’
Many would be happy if specific class action legislation could go some way towards the provision of unified, reliable standards. Indeed, a move is already being seen in this direction, with some courts taking the initiative and using the current civil procedure laws to combine claims. In recent fraud-related cases, such as Meinl, several proceedings were bundled together.
But not all courts are following the same trend, resulting in uncertainty as to whether mass cases will be litigated separately or according to class action standards. Despite a common federal civil procedure law, Irene Welser, co-managing partner and contentious business department head at Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati, believes that Austria’s various regional courts presently interpret the procedures as they see fit.
It is early days yet. The legislation has been held up because the politicians cannot agree on the extent that consumer protection issues should be allowed to impact on companies. Some are worried that a number of corporations could be ruined by such legislation.
In the spotlight
The implications of the HGAA near-collapse extend further than its emergency rescue. In attempting to understand what drove BayernLB’s subsidiary to the edge, Austria’s finance ministry is investigating possible criminal activities at the bank. In Germany, Bavarian prosecutors are looking into the bank’s actual sale to BayernLB.
‘The HGAA story is clearly not good news for Austria’s financial sector,’ says Edith Hlawati, newly appointed co-managing partner at Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati (CHSH). ‘But there are also healthy examples of Austrian banks weathering the crisis very well, such as UniCredit, Erste Bank and RZB Group.’
‘There are healthy examples of Austrian banks weathering the crisis very well.’
Edith Hlawati, Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati
In any event, few believe the scandal has dramatically affected confidence in Austria’s banking sector, and the government is considered to have handled itself well during the affair. ‘It is perceived as a political problem in a particular province that everybody knows is a law unto its own,’ says Peter Polak, managing partner at Fiebinger, Polak, Leon & Partner (FPLP).
On their toes
Because the HGAA case has been followed up by regulatory and criminal investigations there is plenty of work flowing for lawyers, with such probes triggering additional litigation against financial institutions. Many Austrian managing partners have spotted this new phenomenon and are keen to develop their firms’ white-collar crime capabilities. Firms such as KWR Karasek Wietrzyk already house white-collar experts, including Wolfgang Brandstetter, who represented Bawag, the trade union bank that lost billions in suspect hedge transactions.
HGAA was not the only Austrian bank to feed the country’s lawyers with lucrative restructuring work. HGAA’s troubles represent the second time that the Austrian state has taken over a bank since the financial crisis began: full-service firm Schönherr had already advised Österreichische Volksbanken on the sale of infrastructure finance specialist bank Kommunalkredit to the Austrian government and, in addition to its work for HGAA, Wolf Theiss was called in to advise on Bawag’s capital restructuring, where government funds were tapped through participation capital. The firm also acted on a similar exercise for Erste Bank. In fact, Wolf Theiss claims it acted for around 70% of the major Austrian banks (or their shareholders) in need of reorganisation in 2009. ‘These were extremely challenging projects,’ says Horst Ebhardt, its managing partner, ‘because of the need to balance complex corporate finance aspects with regulatory advice, as well as state aid aspects.’
A crowded floor
Certainly the crisis has been good for a lot of law firms. ‘If we are as busy in 2010 as we were last year,’ says CHSH’s Hlawati, ‘then we will be fine.’ Schönherr managing partner Christoph Lindinger was optimistic from the downturn’s outset: ‘We said from the time of Lehman Brothers’ collapse that the economic crisis would not necessarily impact on the demand for legal services, particularly from full-service law firms.’
Beyond restructuring, many firms have rediscovered their talents for insolvency, and disputes between banks and shareholders have reached unprecedented levels of intensity. ‘Belts have been tightened,’ says Martin Brodey, co-managing partner at Dorda, ‘and people are looking at who made those decisions that caused them loss.’
Indeed, for firms like DLA Piper Weiss-Tessbach, large-scale litigation has become the biggest revenue generator over the past 12 to 18 months. ‘These cases have become as significant to us from a commercial and client-relation point of view as transactions and M&A-related business,’ Claudine Vartian, the firm’s country managing partner for Austria and Slovakia, says. FPLP is another firm that has enjoyed some high-profile instructions. The firm acted as lead counsel for Constantia Packaging in various disputes connected to the Immofinanz scandal, where former executives were suspected of trust breaches and cooking the books. Litigation teams with regulatory skills are in high demand, often in relation to customers’ investments in Madoff-related funds. Florian Kremslehner, litigation head at Dorda, has been involved in a number of headline cases including Meinl (where there were allegations of fraud at Meinl European Land, the property group managed by Meinl Bank) and Immofinanz, either as defence counsel or as adviser to the insurers.
Instances of parties seeking recourse to arbitration have also risen, often in shareholder claims and construction-related disputes coming out of the CEE (see box, ‘Heart of Europe’, page 82). Graf & Pitkowitz is acting on the largest pending Austrian arbitration proceedings for Vivendi and its affiliates, concerning a multi-billion shareholder dispute over one of Poland’s mobile network operators.
Time for a change
As in many countries, Austria’s economic crisis spurred its parliament to review certain laws. Although Austria is yet to be overwhelmed by a wave of corporate bankruptcies, Austrian lawyers are increasingly required to advise on restructuring scenarios. Should the storm break, Austria hopes to be prepared. Deferred for some time, a Chapter 11-style ministerial draft is now on the table, with the legislation expected to come to life in July of this year.
Primarily, the reforms intend to simplify and speed up insolvency proceedings, so as to give companies a better stab at resurrection. Austria’s top lawyers are mostly positive about the changes. ‘We believe that the new legislation’s intention to save, rather than liquidate, insolvent businesses in Austria will turn out to be beneficial for debtors and their employees as well as creditors,’ Claudine Vartian, country managing partner at DLA Piper Weiss-Tessbach, says. Others, such as Markus Fellner, name partner and banking and finance specialist at Fellner Wratzfeld & Partner, do not welcome the changes because the proposed legislation does not allow for creditors to administer debtors’ insolvent entities.
Recent developments in Austria’s corporate governance regime and the Austrian Stock Corporation Amendment Act 2009 follow a general European trend, whereby standards are being applied more rigidly by the authorities and case law is getting stricter. Law firms such as Dorda Brugger Jordis are already advising extensively on compliance issues and are fully geared up to deal with the changes. ‘Supervisory boards do need to be more careful and vigilant in their scrutiny,’ says Martin Brodey, managing partner at Dorda. ‘They have been made aware of their own potential liability.’
Shareholders are benefiting from new levels of transparency and are being granted easier access to shareholder meetings, and not only is Austria contemplating the imposition of a €500m levy on the country’s banks as payback for its recent propping up of the country’s financial system, but the debate is becoming increasingly focused on managing directors’ and board members’ remuneration.
The weakest link
Unsurprisingly, however, capital markets transactions, IPOs and securitisation work have been virtually non-existent in Austria of late, although both Binder Grösswang and CHSH have seen various high-value bond deals. Some firms have noticed strategic investors taking advantage of somewhat improved conditions in the public equity markets. Nonetheless, Schönherr’s Lindinger says that capital markets and leveraged financing do not represent more than 7% to 10% of its revenues, and its partners are not unduly concerned by this particular drop-off in work.
Few would be shocked to hear that big-ticket M&A died off because of the lack of financing, while mid-sized M&A, for financial or strategic reasons, remained fairly active. But it was the rescue deals, fire sales and strategic mergers that really took off, particularly during the second half of 2009. Examples included FPLP advising long-standing client Anglo Irish Bank on the sale of its Austrian subsidiary to Swiss buyer Valartis Group, and acquiring 100% of the shares of a Liechtenstein bank. As for Schönherr, it advised Volkswagen on the Austrian and CEE aspects of the creation of an integrated automotive group with Porsche, led by Volkswagen. Freshfields acted for the Porsche family.
Unlike in some jurisdictions, real estate did not collapse in Austria, although it was badly hit throughout the CEE. In fact, ‘residential real estate prices in Vienna are at a record high,’ Polak says. The commercial side has been less fortunate, although some cash-rich funds are still trickling in. As for the near future, Raoul Hoffer, co-managing partner at Binder Grösswang, expects both big-ticket M&A and commercial real estate to bounce back in 2010 and 2011.
Hlawati believes 2011 is the more realistic bet. ‘Because I work with the banks,’ she says, ‘and observe their current reservations in relation to transaction financing, I am sceptical that we will see significant improvements in traditional M&A this year.’ Indeed, the banks continue to evaluate any future exposure carefully when making lending decisions and will not grant loans without having secured collateral arrangements in place.
In the rest of the region, Peter Huber, managing partner at CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz, believes that bank finance is becoming more available for the right kind of private equity deals in stable economies, such as Poland or the Czech Republic. He has noted stable cash flows into the food and drink industries, and says some private equity houses are still avoiding certain non-EU member countries in southeastern Europe, such as Albania. That said, Freshfields recently acted on a E1bn hydro power plant project for Norwegian Statkraft and Austrian EVN in Albania.
Supporting acts
Infrastructure is proving lucrative for those firms blessed with full-service talents, including regulatory, administrative, real estate, litigation, tax and financing teams. Although there is not much private money around, CHSH advised operating company Bonaventura on Austria’s first PPP motorway-in-operation and acted for Autobahnen- und Schnellstraßen- Finanzierungs- Aktiengesellschaft (ASFINAG), Austria’s sole motorway provider, in a large construction case. KWR has also been active in construction matters, particularly on the regulatory and litigation side. Additionally, areas such as life sciences and health care have encouraged some firms to expand their regulatory and compliance practices, while recent state bailouts have made firms with state aid practices popular.
Law firms with strong support areas such as tax and employment have performed well. CMS has a leading labour law practice, while in tax it has seen increasing numbers of transfer pricing enquiries. Until recently, Austria lagged behind in transfer pricing regulations, but the introduction of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) standards has generated lots of activity in an area that used to be the stranglehold of the accountants.
‘We need to be careful that we don’t copy the US model of having all sorts of spurious claims picked up.’
Florian Kremslehner, Schönherr
Energy is another specialist sector that remains buoyant and, again, tests law firms’ resources across a range of practices, often at international level. Because so much of the gas carried through Austria’s network is in transit, the country is vital to Europe’s gas market. But renewable energy projects are attracting increasing attention, particularly in the CEE. Schönherr has a strong energy practice and has carried out projects all over the region, while CMS recently acted for Gazprom, advising the Russian energy giant on corporate, energy and tax matters regarding the establishment of a E300m gas storage facility in Serbia.
Heart of Europe
With parties becoming pickier than ever about proper contract enforcement, it is inevitable that several disputes end up in arbitration. Vienna’s history as an arbitration venue stretches back over 100 years and, as far as CEE-related claims are concerned, geography leans in Vienna’s favour, so much so that it has become the prime arbitral centre over the past 20 years. ‘Vienna has always been the historical link between western European countries and the CEE/SEE/CIS regions,’ says Dominik Leiter, a partner at Vienna-based firm bpv Hügel. ‘This makes it easier for parties from those countries to agree on Vienna as the arbitration seat.’ With so much gas transported through the country, international gas transit agreements often choose Austrian law and Vienna as the arbitration hub should a dispute arise.
Cultural reasons also play a part. ‘CEE clients feel comfortable in Vienna,’ says Nikolaus Pitkowitz, founding partner at Graf & Pitkowitz, ‘because of Austria’s historic melting pot status. It is seen as a centre of tolerance and is trusted by clients from the region.’
But it’s not just history or being centrally located that has made Vienna one of the top five arbitration venues in Europe. Beyond CEE disputes, many also see Vienna as an excellent arbitration alternative to venues such as London or Paris for cost reasons. Moreover, Austria’s capital offers a reliable court system with top-quality attorneys and high levels of certainty, meaning Austrian arbitral awards are rarely set aside.
Retiring early
But all is not golden in the CEE. With several Austrian and international law firms suffering from over-exposure in eastern Europe, a spate of office closures has taken place in the region. Many believe that some firms hedged all their bets on the privatisation boom in the CEE, but such work was never going to last very long. ‘They took offices in expensive downtown locations,’ Otto Dietrich, a partner at KWR, says. ‘And when the privatisation work dried up, they found themselves with unsustainable overheads.’
In 2009, Clifford Chance withdrew from Hungary. Linklaters shut all of its CEE offices, bar Warsaw, in 2008 and Freshfields has closed its CEE offices, save for Vienna and Moscow, with the most recent closure being Bratislava last year. Also in 2009, German firm Gleiss Lutz withdrew from the region, with its Warsaw and Prague offices taken over by Schönherr.
Freshfields’ decision to pull out caused a stir, especially given the fact that its Vienna practice was a pioneer in the internationalisation of Austrian law firms, opening offices in Bratislava, Budapest and Prague. But times change. Around five years ago Freshfields decided to change its strategy in the CEE region and to give up its own offices. Moscow was retained because of the size and uniqueness of the Russian market.
This is not to say that Freshfields has turned its back on the CEE. The Vienna office remains one of the firm’s centres of competence for the region and Freshfields still has a number of premium projects coming out of the CEE. However, it prefers to work with the two or three best law firms in each country on a permanent basis, coupled with its international expertise from German, London and worldwide offices, the idea being to combine international and regional know-how with leading local specialisms. ‘We could not do what we do if we tried to have offices all around the region,’ Plesser says.
Many Austrian practices share this approach and are more than glad not to have idle, expensive offices or extra fixed costs in the region. They are content to conduct all their regional work from Vienna. ‘We were lucky not to have offices in the CEE region during the crisis,’ says Binder Grösswang’s Hoffer. ‘The business model we have of working from Vienna with our best friends network of firms abroad is flexible and works very well.’
But while Plesser believes that only premium work is a stable or growing segment in the CEE, the Austrian law firms committed to long-term involvement with the country’s neighbours maintain that the opportunities are still there if your strategy is well-conceived. Hungary has had bad press, but Wolf Theiss has seen positive results in the country with energy and restructuring work, and although M&A suffered in Romania, it is reportedly coming back. Again, the key seems to lie in full-service operations. Wolf Theiss has offices in 12 CEE locations, housing significant presences. ‘Our strategy has always been to be known as one of the top firms locally in each of these countries,’ Ebhardt says, ‘while at the same time carving out a deep and distinctive footprint in the region for cross-border and high-end inbound global work.’
‘Our strategy has always been to be known as one of the top firms locally, while carving out a deep footprint for cross-border and high-end inbound global work.’
Horst Ebhardt, Wolf Theiss
Schönherr similarly remains committed. It covers the CEE region fully, with offices in virtually every country. As for the recent exits, Lindinger believes that the die has been cast. ‘We expect the number of competitors to decrease rather than to increase,’ he says. CMS is another key regional player that has confirmed its long-term intention to remain in the region. Its strategy was never to open up foreign offices just to cash in on privatisation, but rather to develop full-service branches that offer the same high levels of service in the CEE as elsewhere, according to managing partner Peter Huber. He tells Legal Business that the firm has a different business model to some other international firms. ‘We are more adaptable during a crisis as we are not driven by certain profitability expectations that originate in the UK. We align ourselves operationally with other CMS offices, but we are more flexible financially,’ he says.
Indeed, many believe that Austrian law firms cannot survive too much interference from London and its demands for unmatchable City rates. FPLP’s Polak believes that with the slowdown in CEE work, the Austrian market has become even smaller, and there is less logic in some multinational firms having offices in Austria.
The beat goes on
Some international law firms have had issues to resolve, both in the CEE generally and in Austria. DLA Piper recently restructured its CEE practice, handing more power to individual office heads, but in January this year five of its Vienna partners announced their departures, including the office’s joint managing partners Stefan Eder and Wieland Schmidt-Schmidsfelden. In addition, the departing team includes finance partner Martin Geiger, regulatory and litigation specialist Ivo Deskovic and projects partner Peter Solt.
Rumours abound about a spat over the firm’s regional strategy. Vartian says that she does not know the specific reasons for the exiting partners’ decision but has heard that they might be planning to set up their own law firm in Vienna. ‘We would be surprised if differences over DLA Piper’s CEE strategy were a reason for them to leave the firm,’ Vartian states, ‘since the current strategy was largely designed, driven and supported by three of those partners at the end of 2008.’ As to where this leaves DLA Piper, the firm says it remains devoted to its nine CEE offices and that it has no intention of withdrawing from the region.
Schönherr has had problems of its own, falling out with members of its real estate team both in Hungary and Austria, but Lindinger is unable to comment further. Like DLA Piper, exit terms are currently being negotiated and he is bound by confidentiality rules. But he does concede that the firm’s CEE real estate revenues have fallen by around 15%, while maintaining that Schönherr still has one of the strongest teams in the region.
As for the future, the big question is when the CEE as a whole will bounce back, as that will directly impact on Austria’s own recovery. UK firms are increasingly turning their attentions to other geographic areas like the Middle East, while most Austrian firms remain focused on the CEE. Yet despite a few setbacks, a historic sense of conservatism and a cautious approach will stand Austria’s legal community in good stead. LB