Founded in Romania in 1998, AROBS is an IT company that provides custom software solutions to a number of industries including pharmaceutical, travel technology, automotive, fintech, IoT, logistics and business solutions. It has seven offices in Romania and seven others abroad.

The BRK Financial Group was also established in Cluj-Napoca and has been present in the market since 1994. The group is both a listed financial investment services company and one of the founding members of the Bucharest Stock Exchange .

12% of the current share capital of AROBS has been included in the private placement on the AeRO market. The placement closed ahead of schedule on day one after being almost three times oversubscribed, with shares bought by both retail and institutional investors.

Following what is currently known as the largest private placement in the history of the AeRO market, Vertis Legal also advised AROBS on its listing on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB). The Vertis Legal team involved in the IPO process was led by the same managing partner, Alexandru Basarab.

The placement closed ahead of schedule on day one after being almost three times oversubscribed, with shares bought by both retail and institutional investors.

Lawyer Monthly had the pleasure of speaking with Alexandru Basarab, Managing Partner at Vertis Legal, to provide us with further insight into this transaction:

Please tell us more about your role in advising on this private placement.

When I started practicing law, litigation and dispute resolution was the “must” of any successful legal business. In recent years, however, the new legal career is no longer about “who won” but rather the science of building relationships and getting people to think and work together so that everyone be a winner.

So to answer your question, our main role was to identify the best conversational language for two of the most successful companies in the Transilvanian market – a middle ground between IT, private investments and law.

Did you encounter any difficulties during the process? If so, how did you overcome them?

The real challenge is being able to merge legal knowledge with the specifics of your client’s business. The first step is to understand your customer’s business. Only then can you find that common language between law and that particular field of activity.

The black swan theory is a metaphor that tells us that unforeseen events, things never imagined, happen and will happen. Business negotiations are events that black swans love to attend. So, in addition to understanding your customer’s business, you also need to know and understand your customer well in order to avoid any black swans.

As we have been working with BRK Financial Group since 2010, we already had a solid relationship and a good understanding of their business and their particular needs. It was both a challenge and an opportunity to learn more about the software industry and the services provided by Arobs around the world and also to meet some of their amazing team. No black swans were spotted.

Have you worked on similar projects recently?

Our firm regularly advises companies in the implementation of investment projects, in particular the sale of company shares, mergers and acquisitions. However, it was a particularly positive feedback from our first collaboration when AROBS again requested our legal support to list the company on the stock exchange in December 2021.