March 2024 – Kinstellar is delighted to announce a new series of promotions in our Bucharest office: 6 of our 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.

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.

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

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, as a recognition of their dedication and diligence in handling numerous recent deals across key very active areas: energy and real estate.

Ioana Criste already has 8 years of legal experience, specializing in energy, oil and 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 and gas upstream aspects.

Rena Saftencu boasts no less than 12 years of experience in the legal field. She has significant expertise in 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.

The Bucharest management team congratulates them all.

We are delighted to recognize the contributions of all colleagues mentioned above with these promotions. They have proven themselves as valuable members of our team and sharing our values – and we thank them. We wish them the best of luck in their new roles and look forward to their continued success.

Victor Constantinescu, Managing Partner