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Danica Šebestová leads the Financial Services team in our Prague and Bratislava offices. She is a seasoned expert on financial regulation and has more than 18 years of extensive experience in domestic and international bank finance. She works on cross-border, multijurisdictional projects across the firm’s global network.
Before the pandemic started, she spent five years on projects in the Middle East (UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), where she analysed complex, cross-border financial transactions evading economic sanctions and money laundering regulations.
During the pandemic, Danica was a member of an advisory group to the Czech government that included professionals from various global consulting firms, the four largest Czech banks and top management of industrial groups. The primary purpose of this group was identifying financial measures to support businesses struggling due to the COVID-19 crisis, economic impact of the closure of schools due to the pandemic, and measures under which businesses were not forced to close during several lockdowns.
Blockchain technology is Danica’s passion, in which she combines her regulatory expertise and analytical skills. She leads the firm’s global blockchain crypto team.
Danica is a member of the Czech Bar Association, the Slovak Bar Association and the New York State Bar Association.
- Assisting financial institutions, primarily in the Middle East and Asia, in investigations of potential violations of economic sanctions and money laundering laws.
- Providing complex strategy advice in the event of the impending insolvency of one of our client’s suppliers, the collapse of which could have a major impact on the entire supply chain and cause extensive damage to the client.
- Representing a major Czech bank in several financings to subsidiaries of a major European operator of food retail stores in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
- Advising the largest Spanish bank in connection with the accession of Faurecia Automotive Slovakia s.r.o. to a €144 million uncommitted receivables purchase and servicing agreement.
- Advising one of the world’s largest construction materials manufacturers on the impacts of EU sanctions against the Russian Federation on the operation of its business, including various financial and other business-management matters.
- Representing a Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation acting as a security agent in a financing provided to Neways Group, based in the Netherlands and Germany, and with subsidiaries in Slovakia.
- Advising a leading global producer of packaging materials in connection with the acquisition of a 100% share in a Czech limited liability company, ultimately owned by a Russian citizen, on the impact of EU sanctions on the transaction.
- Advising an experienced and successful real estate investor and developer, focused primarily on retail, office, residential and hotel sectors in Central Europe, in connection with the extension of an existing loan facility and provision of new loan facility for a real estate development project in Bratislava by a Czech bank.
- Advising a leading Czech bank in connection with export financing insured by Slovak export bank Eximbanka to a Russian borrower for the purchase of equipment.
- Acting in a complex factoring transaction covering two-stage factoring structure, the first intragroup receivables assignment and the second assignment of selected receivables from all jurisdictions through a Luxembourg vehicle to the bank.
- Advising a team with members from Česká spořitelna, the largest Czech retail bank, and IBM, on legal issues related to a mortgage blockchain platform, which will digitalise – to the maximum possible extent – the process of selling and purchasing real property online, including obtaining the mortgage financing, executing the purchase agreement and the mortgage agreement, and the ability to follow the process of approval of the purchaser’s mortgage financing by the bank in real time.
- Representing and providing legal advice to the client, a key creditor of the insolvency debtor, with regard to the insolvency of České aerolinie a.s., a major Czech air carrier.
- Instructed by RWS to act as a Czech borrower (Moravia IT) counsel on the amendment and restatement of the existing facility agreement in connection with the phasing out of LIBOR, and standard amendments consequential on Brexit.
- Providing complex strategy advice to a client in dealing with a key supplier, which, using illegal threats, tried to achieve changes in the conditions of a contract.
- Providing advice to a client in dealing with a key supplier that tried to achieve changes in the conditions of the contract with the help of a “substantial change of circumstances” and threatened the client that it may cease supply if the client does not accept the new conditions.
- Representing an international full-line supplier of automotive thermal and energy management solutions in the provision of financing to its Czech contractual partner for the acquisition of part of a bankruptcy estate in the Czech Republic.
Education
- University of Michigan, LL.M., 2004
- Comenius University in Bratislava, Mgr., 2000
Admissions
- Slovak Republic, 2011
- Czech Republic, 2007
- New York, 2005
Languages
- Slovak
- Czech
- English
- Recognised in The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa 2023 for Czech Republic – Banking, Finance and Capital Markets as a practice head
- Recognised in The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa 2022 for Czech Republic – Banking, Finance and Capital Markets
- Recognised in The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa 2019 for Czech Republic – Banking, Finance and Capital Markets
- Recommended in The Legal 500 EMEA 2018 for Czech Republic and Slovakia – Banking, Finance and Capital Markets
- Recommended in The Legal 500 EMEA 2015, 2016 and 2018 for Czech Republic
- Recognised in The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa 2023 for Czech Republic – Banking, Finance and Capital Markets as a practice head
- Recognised in The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa 2022 for Czech Republic – Banking, Finance and Capital Markets
- Recognised in The Legal 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa 2019 for Czech Republic – Banking, Finance and Capital Markets
- Recommended in The Legal 500 EMEA 2018 for Czech Republic and Slovakia – Banking, Finance and Capital Markets
- Recommended in The Legal 500 EMEA 2015, 2016 and 2018 for Czech Republic