Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance hosts third-annual CEE Finance Conference in Vienna

About 100 representatives from banks, investors and corporate clients came together in Vienna recently to hear from a pan-regional delegation of senior specialists from the Firm and its 'best friend' in Hungary, Lakatos Köves.

The evening featured two panel discussions on topics of current business importance for invited guests, followed by a reception.

Reinforcing messages from other Firm initiatives, the panels focused on the Sea of Change and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis; the reshaping of the finance industry after the financial crisis; and the challenges and opportunities when raising finance in the region.

George Hacket (Capital Markets, Frankfurt) opened the evening. Loren Richards (Banking, Frankfurt) chaired the first panel, which included Deborah Zandstra (Financial Regulation & Derivatives, London), Philip Li (Corporate Finance, London), Szabolcs Mestyán (Lakatos Köves, Budapest), Vladimir Barbolin (Banking, Moscow), Jaroslaw Lorenc (CMT, Warsaw) and Müfit Arapoğlu (Banking & Finance Group, Istanbul).

Alistair McGillivray (Real Estate Finance, London) chaired the second panel, which featured John Fenemore (Finance, London), Victoria Bortkevicha (Finance, Moscow), Olexiy Soshenko (Banking, Kyiv), Matthew Grigg (Financial Regulation & Derivatives, London), Barbora Moring (Capital Markets, Frankfurt) and David Koláček (Corporate, Prague).

To date, the client attendees had mainly dealt with the Firm in the context of event-driven financings. The conference provided a timely opportunity to emphasise the depth of the Firm's capabilities – in particular, several key examples of our involvement at the forefront of business and political efforts to bring stability to the world's financial markets. This included highlighting the Firm's role as counsel to the EFSF and its role as adviser to the IIF in its negotiations on behalf of the private sector task force on Greece with the "troika" and Euro Area Member States on voluntary restructuring of Greece's sovereign debt.

The panel format demonstrated the ability of our people to share and draw upon knowledge within the Firm and deliver the full wealth of that experience where and when needed for the benefit of our clients.

An audio recording from the conference is available on request. If you would like to receive a copy please e-mail us.