Our team

Expertise

Ciprian Păun is a Romanian law qualified lawyer with over 17 years of professional experience.

He specializes in the corporate/M&A, tax and banking law fields, assisting national and international investors and companies active in the oil, financial-banking, commerce, IT, data protection, real estate and capital market sectors.

He has a vast teaching career, teaching courses in tax law and business law at well-established and renowned Romanian and foreign universities, such as the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, The University of Bucharest, Plymouth State University (USA), École de Management de Normandie (Caen, France).

He is a lawyer recommended by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Austria, and by the German Embassy in Romania.

His practice focuses on:

• Corporate/M&A
• Tax Law
• Competition
• Data Protection
• Real Estate and Construction

Mergers & Acquisitions

• assistance to a polish leader in the construction materials market in connection with an asset deal concerning the sale of a production factory belonging to a subsidiary of an Italian worldwide leader on the steel market
• assistance to a leading construction materials producer in the CEE  area in relation to the acquisition of one of the most important producers on the construction materials market, valued at over EUR 30 million (one of the major Romanian transactions from 2018)
• assistance to a subsidiary of a German furniture company in the sale of all the movable and immovable assets from Cluj county
• assistance to a local health clinic in the sale of 65% of the shares, after a restructuring process of the company, to one of the major players in the medical industry in Romania
• assistance to a leading company in the construction materials sector in Romania in relation to the acquisition of 90% of the shares of a Romanian local company ranked fourth on the market, as well as in the procedure for obtaining the approval from the Romanian Competition Council regarding the takeover
• assistance to a local investor in the sale of a warehouse asset to one of the leading European players in warehouse management
• advice to a local investor in the sale of real estate assets to a foreign private equity fund
• assistance to one of the subsidiaries of a leading IT Japanese company from Germany in the process of restructuring the activity in Romania
• advice to a local investor in the sale of 100% of the shares in an IT company from Cluj to one of the most important European leaders in the industry

Tax Law

• assistance to the client – natural person – in the Preliminary Ruling procedure before the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg during the oral hearing and the writing conclusions phase
• advice to a subsidiary of an Italian company in connection with a lawsuit against the Romanian National Agency for Fiscal Administration valued at over EUR 100 million
• advice to a natural person in connection with the challenge of a decision of the Tax Authority with a value of over EUR 150 million
• assistance to a large German company active in the IT sector in litigation regarding transfer pricing matters
• assistance to a multi-national company in the production area in fiscal litigation for the annulment of a tax ruling issued by the fiscal authorities
• representing various clients in legal procedures against the Romanian National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) in 2019 in cases with a combined total value of more than EUR 250 millions before the High Court of Justice and Casation, Constitutional Court of Romania and different Courts of Appeal

Competition

• representation of one of the leading companies in the construction materials market in the procedure for obtaining the approval of the Romanian Competition Council for the takeover of 90% of the shares of an important player active on the same market

Data Protection

• advice to a large IT company from Cluj-Napoca in conducting an audit of the processing operations within the company, issuing recommendations regarding the necessary actions to be taken for ensuring compliance with the applicable legislation and assistance in implementing such measures; also provided assistance on day-to-day privacy matters, and held training sessions regarding data protection requirements
• assistance to a regional leading pharmaceutical network in implementing privacy documents, including privacy notices, internal procedures and notifications with the data protection authority
• advice to a large furniture production company from the Northern part of Romania in conducting an audit of the processing operations within the company, issuing recommendations regarding the necessary actions to be taken for ensuring compliance with the applicable legislation and assistance in implementing such measures; also provided assistance on day-to-day privacy matters.
• training sessions on data protection matters for different companies and public institutions, such as the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF), the Cluj Bar Association etc.

Real Estate and Construction

• representation of one of the largest Spanish construction companies in the claims settlement procedure and termination of the contract for the introduction of water supply and sewage services (FIDIC based) concluded with the Caras-Severin County
• assistance to one of the largest Spanish companies with the assessment of claims arising from a FIDIC agreement for the construction of water infrastructure in Maramures county; ongoing assistance in the claims settlement process
• assistance to the Romanian subsidiary of a Greek company with the drafting and negotiation of the contract conditions for residential buildings in Cluj
• assistance to a Romanian company with the drafting and negotiation of the contract conditions for several residential projects in Cluj (4 projects)
• advice to a major local player in the Cluj area on permitting and zoning matters, drafting reservation agreements, pre-sale-purchase and sale-purchase agreements, condominium rules; also provided assistance in managing the relationship with the public authorities
• assistance to a major Austrian company interested in acquiring an industrial plot of land in Cluj county, with due diligence investigations and the development of the business strategy

Selected credentials include work prior to joining NNDKP.

Education

• Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Faculty of Law, Law Degree
• Westfaelische Wilhelms- Universitaet, Germany, Master Degree in European Law, graduated with Magna Cum Laude
• Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Faculty of Law, PhD. in Law
• Babes Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of History and Philosophy
• Babes Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Master of Arts in German Studies
• Research assistant at the Austrian and International Fiscal Law Institute under the aegis of the Vienna University of Economics (Austria), being a beneficiary of an OMV Research Fellow Scholarship

Memberships and Affiliations

• Cluj County Bar
• Member of the European Association of Tax Law Professors
• Associate Professor, Ph.D., at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, teaching the courses Fiscal Law and Business Law (since 2002)
• Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest, teaching the courses Taxation of the Individual and European Fiscal Law within the Master’s Degree in Fiscal Law program (2012-2018)
• Associate Professor at the Plymouth State University (USA) teaching the course Legal Environment of International Business (2009-2012)
• Associate Professor at École de Management de Normandie (Caen-Le Havre), teaching the course EU Business Law (2015)
• Guest professor at the University of Regensburg (Germany) ( 2013)

Notable Contributions

• speaker at ZF Live (November 2023)
• speaker at the sixth CELF event organized by the CELF Community in 2023
• speaker at the NNDKP CELF event in Cluj-Napoca – Tax inspection in The Digital Era (2023)
• speaker at the second CELF event organized by the CELF Community in 2023
• speaker at the “Formalism and Freedom in Private Law” conference, organized by the Babes-Bolyai University Law School and the Romanian Institute for Lawyers’ Training and Professional Development – Cluj Territorial Center (2022)
• speaker at the debate “The Passion of Sisyphus: probation in tax law”, organized by Juridice.ro (2022)
• speaker at AmCham’s Regional Conference – Innovative Communities – Local Investments for Global Success (2022)
• speaker and moderator at the “Smart Law Conference: Tax Evasion. Transylvania Special Edition”, organized by Universul Juridic (2021)
• moderator at the “National Tax Law Conference”, in the “International Tax” panel, organized by Juridice.ro (2021)
• moderator at the “The 15% tax on BIG TECH” debate, organized by Juridice.ro (2021)
• speaker at the “Tax & Finance Forum Cluj-Napoca”, organized by Business Mark (2021)
• speaker at the NNDKP CELF Conference: Fiscal disputes in times of the pandemic, organized by NNDKP and Ziarul Financiar (2021)
• speaker at the “Tax and Tax Law Conference”, organized by Juridice.ro and Wolters Kluwer Romania (2021)
• contributor to NNDKP – COVID-19 Legal & Tax Resource Center
• speaker at the webinar “The changes in the Fiscal Code and the Fiscal Procedure Code”, organized by NNDKP (2020)
• speaker at the “National Conference of Fiscal Law”, organized by Juridice.ro (2020)
• speaker at the “Legal&Tax Videoconference, 4th edition – How does Romania handles the global pandemic’s impact on its local economy”, organized by NNDKP and Ziarul Financiar (2020)
• speaker at the debate “A direct tax tougher than excise duties: the pandemic”, organized by the Society for Legal Sciences and the Bucharest Bar (2020)
• speaker and moderator – “Cluj Legal Weeks” webinar series, organized by NNDKP (2020)
• speaker at the event “Legal&Tax Conference, 3rd edition – How do we manage tax and (macro)economics risks in 2020?”, organized by NNDKP and Ziarul Financiar (2020)
• Sole author of 6 books, co-author of 10 books published in the country and abroad and author of more than 80 articles published in magazines and periodicals in Romania, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, USA, France, The Netherlands