June 21, 2019 16:10 
Electric Power Company S.A. ("Electrica") won the litigation in the first instance against the Energy Participation Management Company ("SAPE"), in which the latter requested Electrica, jointly with other defendants, to pay compensation of about 800 million Euro, in connection with alleged breaches of the obligations to monitor the privatization contracts of Electrica's former distribution subsidiaries. This litigation follows a number of international arbitrations concerning the respective privatization contracts.
Electrica was assisted in this dispute by a team of attorneys from RTPR Allen & Overy and Schoenherr & Associates SCA. The RTPR Allen & Overy team consisted of Valentin Berea (partner), Adriana Dobre (senior associate), Vicu Buzac (managing associate), Ana Popa (Nedelcu) (associate) and Andrada Rusan (associate), while the Schoenherr & The associates consisted of Adina Jivan (partner, Romania) and Iustin Armaşu (senior attorney at law, Romania).
Valentin Berea said: "We are glad that we have managed to win an important victory for a client who links us with a beautiful history and who over time has shown our confidence by giving us many mandates that motivated us to we are beyond our limits. The litigation was extremely difficult because the opponent attempted to bring back, in another procedural framework, substantive issues that had been the subject of complicated international arbitrations. Even if the court eventually settled the case on the basis of the exceptions raised by us, our defense presupposed in the written phase also the fight against those substantive issues of the historical privatization contracts concluded with buyers who were not part of this file. That is why we needed to form a solid team of lawyers, representing two law firms, and the collaboration with colleagues from Schoenherr & Associates was an excellent one. The proof of recognition of our effort is that the court has given us the full court costs, which is not happening very often. "
In turn, Adina Jivan said: "It was indeed a complex dossier that involved a great deal of work and made it necessary to allocate significant specialized resources to Schoenherr and Associates and our colleagues at RTPR Allen & Overy . A dossier with multidisciplinary legal implications, a litigation with an interesting and complex issue, in which appeal was made to a long and not at all simple contractual and litigating history. And, of course, the importance of the procedural aspects, on which the otherwise favorable solution was obtained, must not be ignored. On the other hand, financial litigations of this magnitude, likely to have a significant impact on the economic situation of the company concerned, always come with additional pressure on the company, pressure that is implicitly passed on to lawyers. I think this success is due not only to the experience of both companies in complex files but also to the efficient collaboration between us and to the level of involvement of the client's internal team. "
