Regardless if it is a holding that you manage, a single listed company, a small or large 'family' company, a franchising enterprise or a start-up, the success of your Company requires more than business acumen. Currently, practically every sector of the market is saturated with copious legal regulation the proper application of which is a prerequisite of your Company's growth, whether involving the public administration or business partners and competitors.
The Corporate Law and Business Contract Practice is supported by a team of experienced lawyers focusing on corporate legal services and a broad spectrum of mergers, acquisitions and transformations, private equity, joint ventures and business contracts. Relying on our many years of experience and understanding of the constantly changing legal conditions, we provide comprehensive service to our Clients in both the internal and the cross-border markets. We actively commit ourselves to the work that enables our Clients to avoid potential liability or loss resulting from non-application or improper application of the law. At the Client's request we act on the Company's behalf as its chief advisor.
The main tasks of this Practice are the formation of companies, their divisions and representative offices, as well as registration in the National Court Register. Putting stress on the goals and intentions of the founders, we take care of the compliance of company agreements and articles with provisions of the law, with due account taken also of the practical aspects of the functioning of registration courts. We also provide legal assistance in shaping the contents of other company documents both at the stage of creation and subsequent operation, such as: shareholders' agreements, management board and supervisory board rules of procedure, codes of good practices and other documents relating to corporate governance.
As part of our ongoing – permanent or periodic – comprehensive corporate legal service we cover the drafting of by-laws handed down by corporate bodies, we represent Clients at shareholders' meetings, look after the proper application of internal corporate procedures and the registration of changes in the registration court.
Our experience includes all sorts of domestic and cross-border corporate mergers, splits and transformations. We provide legal assistance with all other forms of reorganisation, including increases and decreases of share capital, redemption of shares, pledges on shares, sale of businesses or organised parts of businesses, debt conversion into equity, and any other activities regulated by private business law.
Furthermore, we carry out due diligence surveys of the legal status of Polish entities, both from the purchaser's and the seller's points of view.
As part of our business contract service, we look after the compliance of contracts with mandatory provisions of the law and with market standards, with account taken of the contractual balance of the parties. Our experience spans a broad spectrum of business contracts, such as:
- foundation and holding agreements,
- business intermediation contracts,
- contracts for trade in enterprises,
- co-operation agreements and understandings,
- distribution agreements,
- commodity market contracts,
- construction and infrastructural investment contracts,
- insurance contracts,
- office and storage space rentals, and
- collateralisation of the above.
We provide services at the stage of executing letters of intent, framework agreements, preliminary agreements or understandings concerning the terms of future collaboration, as well as negotiation and renegotiation of agreements.
Contact:
Kamil Szmid Ph.D., Advocate, Partner
Warsaw
Tel.: +48 (22) 697 73 45 Fax: +48 (22) 697 73 52 Mobile: +48 607 461 811
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Dr Kamil Szmid heads the Corporate Law and Business Contract Practice in KML Legal. Dr. Szmid gained his professional experience in a leading international law firm, subsequently in a Cracow law firm, and then in solo practice. From 2005 to 2009, Dr. Szmid collaborated with the law firm of Baker & McKenzie in Warsaw, and from 2010 to 2012 with the law firm of Góralczyk, Rychlicki, Boroń in Cracow. Dr. Szmid has broad experience connected with business and commercial law, companies, securities and real property, including the complex implementation of investment processes, as well as litigation before ordinary and administrative courts of law. Dr. Szmid has provided services relating to distribution contracts and business intermediation contracts, as well as competition law. Dr. Szmid. has advised on development, construction and infrastructural undertakings throughout all stages of such transactions; he has been involved in the execution of a multi-purpose retail, office and entertainment complex located in the centre of Warsaw. He has participated in drafting and negotiating business contracts and leases of storage, office and retail space throughout the entire territory of Poland.
Kamil Szmid is an advocate and member of the Bar Chamber in Warsaw.
Dr. Szmid is a graduate of the Law and Administration Faculty of the Jagiellonian University, with a five-year intramural Master's degree summa cum laude, and graduate of a Ph.D. programme in private business law at the Chair of Private Business Law at the same Faculty. In 2012, he presented his dissertation titled: 'The nature of the joint-stock company as an indicator of adherence to liberty of contract in Polish and American law,' under the oversight of Professor A. Szumański. Dr. Szmid has completed multiple academic studies and internships in foreign academic establishments of renown: in the Erasmus Socrates programme at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in European law (2005); an international exchange programme at the Law Faculty of Cornell University (Ithaca, NY, 2005), where he was given two awards: CALI Excellence for the Future Award for the best results in the Business Organization exam, and the G. Henn Memorial Prize – the annual award for the student with the best results in Corporations at the Law Faculty of Cornell University; Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education stipend (a tutor grant) in the Comparative Law and Private Law Institute in Hamburg under Professor K. Hopt (2010); and at the Law Faculty of Yale University (New Haven, CT, 2011) under Professor H. Hansmann.
Dr. Szmid is proficient in English and conversant in Italian.