Compliance becomes increasingly important in our law firm. While a few years ago, Compliance was a topic that did not attract much public interest in the Czech Republic and neighbouring countries, the contrary is true now. At the moment, Compliance also appears to be not only a matter of large enterprises but also that applying to medium-sized businesses. The reasons include ever more frequent official inspections as well as pressure from large customers, notably in construction or the automotive industry. This is why contractors often need to prove that they manage, inter alia, an effective Compliance System. Another stimulus to promote a Compliance System is the financial penalisation, assessed by authorities from the sales generated by the entire group, with such penalisation often having a devastating impact on the enterprise. All of this leads to the effort to put in place an accurate Compliance System, the effectiveness and observance of which will be regularly supervised.
In this field, we closely cooperate with PF&P, a leading firm in cartel law and Compliance (www.pfp-legal.de), which represents our clients, as needed, in judicial and extrajudicial proceedings.
The range of our Compliance and cartel law services is wide. In addition to analysing business risks, including a comprehensive contractual and legal audit, interviews with the company management and chiefs of the departments which are particularly at risk, we also offer intensive training of your employees, exactly tailored to your business and its needs. We can demonstrate the simulation of dawn raids on the basis of multilingual computer lists of words searched. We will train your employees in the manners of correct behaviour and dealings with inspection authorities for an event of a dawn raid. Naturally, we will intensively support you in compiling and putting in place the Compliance System in your enterprise and, if you wish, we will regularly supervise it.
In Compliance and cartel law, just like in other fields of law, it is up to our clients to decide how extensive our work will be. That said, we will always be pleased to verify also your individual contracts and their conformity in respect of Compliance. However, the core of our work consists of the long-term support to our clients’ businesses in putting the Compliance System in place.
In addition to dealing with Compliance as part of cartel law, we also assume mandates in other areas such as Compliance for personal data protection, IT-Compliance, Compliance in labour law, etc.
Traditional cartel law is also included in our work, both in the context specified and as part of our commercial law section. Of course, we will also be pleased to represent you in proceedings before the Czech Republic’s Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS).
The Ueltzhöffer Balada association is a founding member of the ATLA (Anti Trust Lawyers Association CEE), which currently covers the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Hungary.
Responsible lawyer: Andreas Ueltzhöffer
Andreas Ueltzhöffer is a German and Czech lawyer. He founded the law firm together with Jan Balada. Previously, he was a partner and head of the German team at CMS Cameron McKenna in Prague. He speaks German, English, Czech and Spanish.
Andreas has worked in the Czech Republic since 1994 and is one of the most experienced internationally active lawyers in this country.
Owing to his cooperation (since 2005) with Professor Dr. Kai-Thorsten Zwecker, partner of German law firm PF&P from Ulm, he could closely learn about Compliance long ago. On this occasion, he led the teams represented by Professor Dr. Zweckr, which were initially engaged primarily in risk analyses in Czech subsidiaries of foreign groups under various situations. Afterwards, our Compliance Section was developed and has continued to cooperate with PF&P as well as supported a large number of clients in the Czech market.
As the founding member of Ueltzhöffer Balada, Mr. Ueltzhöffer is responsible for the future development of this association. He considers the Compliance sector to be one of the core pillars of this law firm, and intends to continue to expand the sector.