The international law firm Baker McKenzie has appointed two co-heads of its Kyiv office.
As the law firm announced in a press release, Sergey Cherny and Gennady Voitsitsky have been elected co-heads of the Kyiv office. Voitsitsky succeeds Vyacheslav Yakimchuk, who had served as co-managing partner since 2023 and will continue to lead the corporate and M&A practice at Baker McKenzie’s Kyiv office.
Sergey Cherny has been a co-managing partner of Baker McKenzie’s Kyiv office since 2010 and heads the banking and finance practice, as well as the capital markets practice. He advises clients on cross-border lending, structured finance, securitization, debt capital markets, and debt restructuring. He is ranked among Ukraine’s leading lawyers by authoritative international and Ukrainian legal rankings, including Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500 EMEA, and IFLR1000.
Gennadiy Voitsitsky has led the tax law practice at Baker McKenzie’s Kyiv office since 2007. He advises multinational corporations, investors, and private clients on international tax planning and structuring, inbound and outbound investments, tax disputes and litigation, as well as private wealth management. He is recognized as one of the leading experts in tax law by Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, and ITR World Tax.
Baker McKenzie has been operating in Ukraine for 34 years. Despite the challenges posed by the war, the Kyiv office continues to advise Ukrainian and international clients on a wide range of legal and business matters, thereby promoting investment, recovery, and business development in Ukraine.
Baker McKenzie has assisted with the successful formation of a private equity fund vehicle in Luxembourg and sourcing financing for the joint acquisition of a 16% equity stake in Allseeds S.A. by the Dutch development bank FMO and private equity manager Diligent Capital Partners.
The investment was made to realize Allseeds’ expansion plans of adding to its business line oilseed crushing and trans-shipment capacities, as well as to enable other value-added processing of vegetable oils and their by-products.
The transaction involved legal and tax structuring of the private equity fund vehicle to support investment in the target business as well as other future transactions with key input from Partner Catherine Martougin, Senior Associate Ali Bouhrara from the Private Equity Team and Tax Director Amar Hamouche from Tax practice Group of Baker McKenzie Luxembourg and was project-managed by Senior Associate Andrii Moskalyk under the overall supervision of Partner Viacheslav Yakymchuk from the Corporate and M&A Practice of Baker McKenzie Kyiv.
“This was a truly remarkable and exciting transaction for us and, we believe, for the Ukrainian market in general. In recent years, not so many deals have been designed for the purposes of private equity funds targeting Ukrainian business opportunities. We hope that this paves the way for transactions of a similar nature and magnitude in the near future and generally revives the interest of private equity investors in Ukrainian assets,” said Viacheslav Yakymchuk.
BAKER MCKENZIE, DILIGENT CAPITAL PARTNERS, FORMATION, PRIVATE EQUITY FUND
