Corporate, Competition & Commercial Law

Our Corporate, Competition & Commercial Law group concentrates in the following main areas:

Corporate Law & Related Matters
The Warsaw office offers a full range of corporate services. It assists Baker & McKenzie clients in the establishment of limited liability companies, joint stock companies and branch offices. This includes the registration of newly incorporated companies with all necessary registration bodies (Commercial Court, State Statistics Office, Tax Inspectorate).

Additionally, the group provides Baker & McKenzie clients with an array of services once their companies have been established. These include, but are not limited to, advising on labor law matters and other regulatory matters, arranging for work permits for foreign staff and other immigration related formalities, assisting in the opening of bank accounts, preparing any required corporate document as well as its notarisation and legalisation.

Other general corporate services include the assistance in the corporate maintenance including annual shareholders meetings, assistance in share transfers, increase/decrease in charter capital and other charter's amendments, corporate reorganization such as splits and mergers, liquidation, procurement of various licenses and permits, such as permits for the acquisition of real property.

Competition & Commercial Law
No legal entity, private or state owned may ignore competition law issues. Any important M&A or joint venture project must take into account the Polish and EU applicable to merger control.

Creating joint ventures or other forms of cooperation, establishing distribution networks, participating in trade associations, transferring intellectual property rights may also raise several competition law issues.
We regularly advise clients on Polish merger control and assist and represent them in the filing of notifications with the Polish antitrust authorities. We also advise clients on all aspects of competition law, from regulations applicable to monopolies, to the abuse of a dominant position on a particular market, to state aids and to vertical and horizontal agreements containing restrictions on competition. In this context, we assist clients in drafting all forms of distribution agreements such as franchise, exclusive distribution and purchase agreements.

We closely work with Baker & McKenzie's our colleagues in our European Competition Law Practice Group. Our team advises clients on a range of EC competition issues including the implications of anti-competitive restrictions within commercial agreements, such as exclusive distribution or purchasing systems, the effects of market-sharing arrangements including cartels, regulation of the abusive behavior of market power and monopolies (both private and state), legal requirements in relation to the notification of mergers, and the effect of state aids on commercial transactions, and how to deal with investigation at the EU level and to co-ordinate a European defense strategy with other proceedings, such as US, Canadian and EU national authority cases.

Generally speaking, the Corporate, Competition and Commercial Practice Group coordinates work involving EC law matters such as trade regulation, environment and regulatory industries with our team based in Brussels.

In the areas of trade law, we advise clients on both Polish law (antidumping issues) and WTO issues.