Although there was no new additions to the team at Kambourov & Partners in the last year, 2015 did mark the promotion of eight senior associates to partner, including regulatory partner Nikolay Vasilchev, insolvency partner Hristina Kirilova and corporate M&A partner Veronika Hadjieva. The move comes as the firm looks to offer its lawyers greater responsibility and independence, and allows for the introduction of several new departments.The financial and corporate practice is divided into five general areas, banking and finance, M&A, restructuring, insolvency and capital market work, and has high levels of activity across all of these practice areas.In banking and finance, although the most preeminent work remains confidential, the firm had involvement in some interesting deals. Following the collapse of Corporate Commercial Bank (Corpbank) in 2014 there has been an increase in the volume of recovery work across the jurisdiction, and in line with this the firm acted for members of the Mediterranean Cable Maintenance Agreement in connection with the recovery of blocked funds, after the bank lost its license. Similarly the firm advised Commercial Bank Victoria, which is a subsidiary of Corpbank, in its role as financer for development company BuySell Real Estate Agent’s proposed retail development in Sofia. The bank was also unable to fulfil its credit agreement, and as a result of failing to receive the financing the company entered insolvency proceedings, through which the firm advised them.More active this year in the field of M&A, the firm acted on some attention grabbing transactions. Most notably the firm acted on two occasions for Bulgarian food retailer AP Mart, acting first on its acquisition of rival Piccadilly from Delhaize, and then on the subsequent merger with Carrefour. This transaction is innovative in that the merger will be the first time that a supplier has worked directly with a retailer in Bulgaria, it will be the biggest merger in the retail market to date in the jurisdiction and shows an appetite for consolidation in the market.
