Martin Bendik, a founding partner at the Prague-based legal firm Wilson & Partners, has been practicing law since 1998, when he began his career at the legal firm Linklaters. He had just completed his legal training at the Charles University’s Faculty of Law when the opportunity arose and as it happened, the work he was assigned in the beginning was real estate-related. “Real estate law happened a bit by coincidence,” he says today. As he has a strong technical background as well, one of the most important deals he worked on at that company was for Hyundai, advising it on an agreement with the Czech state over the level of subsidies and support it would receive.
After leaving that firm together with Bryan Wilson to form Wilson & Partners, Bendik worked again for Hyundai on another high-level deal: the construction contract for Hyundai’s factory in Nosovice. Among the more important real estate investment deals Bendik has worked on was the Firm’s first institutional transaction, which was DEKA’s acquisition of Lighthouse, from Tamir Winterstein and the Lighthouse Group. He also took part in DEKA’s first acquisition following the financial crisis (which hit shortly after Wilson & Partners was founded in 2007) of the Gemini building in Prague 4 – Pankrac.
More recently, Bendik’s list of prominent deals was bolstered by Atrium’s acquisition of a 75 percent stake in Arkady Pankrac, which it bought from Unibail-Rodamco. Bendik was representing the buyer in this transaction, which was complicated and lengthy in part because of the anti-monopoly approval process. He’s advised on acquisitions and disposals for numerous other investors and developers including Invesco, Immofinanz, Immorent, funds of Ceska sporitelna, Mint and Caerus.
