Kinstellar announces new series of promotions across multiple practice areas in Bucharest, Romania

Kinstellar announces a new series of promotions in Bucharest office: 6 lawyers, active across multiple service lines, have been promoted to the positions of Senior and Managing Associate. These promotions reflect the office’s commitment to put the right team in place to provide comprehensive legal solutions in a wide range of practices, including corporate M&A, employment, dispute resolution, energy, or real estate.

Lidia Zărnescu, Cătălin Roman and Mihai Stan have been promoted to Managing Associate, bolstering their contribution to the office’s employment, dispute resolution and corporate and M&A recent accomplishments.

Lidia Zărnescu is a senior lawyer who boasts more than 12 years of experience in the employment and labour law field. She has significant expertise and an established track record handling a wide spectrum of employment and labour law issues, but is also specialised in dispute resolution, having successfully assisted and represented employers before national courts of law. Lidia currently holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest. She genuinely loves employment and labour law, and regularly publishes books or articles and speaks at conferences.

Lidia and Cătălin together co-head the local employment and labour law service line.

Cătălin Roman is also a veteran with more than 13 years of experience in providing employment support to multinationals in Romania, advising on all aspects of labour-related matters. Cătălin also co-heads the firm-wide employment and labour law service line. His practice likewise covers dispute resolution, having represented clients in front of Romanian courts of law in a wide range of employment matters (both civil and administrative). He is a regular contributor to international and local publications, often serves as speaker in conferences and has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by the reputable legal directory Legal 500 Europe.

Mihai Stan is a senior lawyer with almost 11 years of legal experience. Mihai practices Corporate and M&A, where he advises on assignments as varied as mergers, acquisitions, sales of operations, exits from the local market, and more general corporate and commercial matters, but also compliance and company formation aspects. His expertise extends to intellectual property, data privacy and cyber-security issues and has previously advised reputable international companies across a broad range of sectors including automotive, financial institutions, industrials, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.

Ioana Criste, Rena Saftencu and Cosmin Vasilescu have also been promoted to Senior Associate, with the local office further recognizing the team’s dedication, diligence and tenacity in handling the most recent deals across key practice areas and highly active sectors of activity: energy and real estate.
 
Ioana Criste already has 8 years of legal experience, specializing in energy, oil & gas, mineral resources and regulatory law. She is engaged in a wide range of mandates that include complex projects and commercial transactions across the energy sector, as well as project and infrastructure development and construction. She regularly advises at all stages of a project, from development until commissioning and operation. Her expertise also includes day-to-day advice on energy-related matters including regulatory for nuclear and oil & gas upstream aspects.  

Rena Saftencu boasts no less than 12 years of experience in the legal field. She has significant expertise in the employment law area, having previously worked for international companies active across various sectors on a wide range of matters: disciplinary procedures, employment terminations, transfer of employees, bargaining agreements, maritime labour regulations and other day-to-day aspects. Rena has also been active across the renewable energy and real estate sectors, where she has assisted on both development and transactional matters: sale-purchase agreements, agricultural and commercial leases, superficies agreements, services and design agreements, as well as various day-to-day matters.

Cosmin Vasilescu has almost 8 years of experience and mainly focuses on corporate and M&A. He has assisted on acquisitions, restructurings and day-to-day corporate matters, but has also been involved in large due diligence processes in relation to both share deals and asset deals across a broad range of sectors. He has gained years of experience in the banking and finance area where he has previously worked on sophisticated cross-border finance transactions, related agreements or security packages, but has also supported our team with specific knowledge of financial regulatory structures and requirements.

Congratulating the newly-promoted, the office’s managing and senior partners point to the focus that Kinstellar in Bucharest places on developing its talented lawyers. Managing Partner Victor Constantinescu highlighted: “We are delighted to recognize the contributions of all the above-mentioned colleagues with these promotions. They come as a proof of the engagement we have to support our team in its further development. Together with the wider management team, we thank each of them for their work, flexibility, dedication and results over the past year, as well as for their steady willingness to embrace the vision of the firm we want to build together. We wish them the best of luck in their new roles and look forward to their continued success’’.

Last month, Kinstellar has announced the promotions to Counsel of Cătălin Dinu and Cătălin Graure in Bucharest.

Cătălin Dinu specialises in real estate and renewable energy projects. He has more than 10 years of experience and has led several headline transactions for the office.

Cătălin regularly assists international and domestic clients on due diligence, property and real estate M&A transactions, land development (permitting and construction), and asset management (leases, property management etc.). He has extensive experience across many asset classes, including industrial, retail, office, and agricultural. With a solid real estate background, Cătălin has also gained significant expertise in renewable energy projects. He regularly coordinates and assists high-profile energy companies on securing project land, development of wind and solar farms, sale and purchase of renewables projects, co-developments and project management.

Cătălin joined Kinstellar as a Junior Associate in 2012. After having worked for local law firms, Cătălin rejoined us in 2020 as a Senior Associate and was promoted to Managing Associate in 2021.

Cătălin has been recognised as a Rising Star by international legal directories, being appreciated as ‘‘an outstanding lawyer, with great business-oriented skills, doing an excellent job”.

Cătălin Graure focuses on competition and energy matters and has 10 years of experience. He advises on competition matters including cartel investigations, sector inquiries, dawn raids, internal compliance programmes, and merger control analysis and filings. He is a seasoned FDI screening expert, having conducted extensive deal analyses and filings under Romania’s recently introduced FDI screening regime.

Cătălin also advises clients on electricity generation, distribution and supply, natural gas trading and supply, or oil & gas upstream aspects, as well as in targeted investigations carried out by the Romanian Energy Regulatory Authority.

Cătălin joined Kinstellar as a Junior Associate in 2014. After having worked for an international law firm, he re-joined in 2020 as a Senior Associate, and was promoted to Managing Associate in 2021.

In recent legal directories clients praise him for being “very professional, with excellent knowledge and expertise, hardworking and accommodating’’.