Linklaters has acted for a consortium including Allianz Real Estate and ECE in the EUR 412m acquisition of Silesia City Center, one of Poland’s largest shopping malls located in Katowice. It is the largest real estate M&A deal in Poland and the whole CEE region since the beginning of 2013.

A cross-border team from Linklaters in Warsaw, Amsterdam and Düsseldorf worked on a number of challenging legal aspects of the transaction. The team was led by Artur Kulawski, head of the firm’s Warsaw real estate practice and Janusz Dzianachowski, managing associate within the real estate practice. Commenting on the complexity of the deal, Artur Kulawski said:

“This was a complex transaction requiring close cooperation of lawyers from Poland, the Netherlands, and Germany, as well as few other jurisdictions. It was especially challenging due to a number of unusual legal structures applied and necessity to reflect the requirements of the joint venture terms and conditions into transaction documents governed by Polish law.”