Press Release

Karanović & Nikolić is proud to announce that Rastko Petaković has been made Senior Partner. Rastko began his impeccable career as a trainee at the Belgrade office of Karanović & Nikolić in 2005. He spent his internship within the firm's corporate and M&A practice and in parallel specialized in competition law at programs with major international law firms and engaged in advocacy ahead of the adoption of the 2005 Competition Law. Already in 2006 he acted on many ground breaking merger and antitrust cases in Serbia and Montenegro.

In early 2007, as a Senior Associate he founded the Competition team which has grown into a leading competition practice in Serbia and the region. In the first year of ranking the field of competition, Chambers & Partners put the firm and Rastko in Tier 1 category.

In January 2010 he made Partner. Under Rastko's leadership, our Competition team acted in virtually all major antitrust and merger cases in Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and other countries, in which the firm successfully defended a number of clients in highly visible cartel, dominance and merger control cases, some of which are:
• Agrokor/Mercator (the most significant Phase II merger case in the region of South East Europe, in which we negotiated remedies in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia)
• Oil cartel case (the first major cartel investigation in Serbia in which we successfully defended our client against allegations)
• IDEA (where we succeeded to reverse the largest ever antitrust fines in the region to date)
• Sport Klub case (acted in virtually all antitrust cases involving media rights in Bosnia
• Telekom Srpske cases (defended the incumbent against dominance allegations in a number of cases)
Over the years he played a key role in 2015 in expanding the firm's practice in the region.

Commenting on his appointment, Rastko said: "I am delighted to take on this new role at the firm, one I've admired from the first day of orientation, more than eleven years ago, to this very day. The successes of Karanovic & Nikolic were driven by the vision of all of our partners but they would have been impossible without relying on teamwork - so above all I am grateful to all of my colleagues with whom I have worked over the years who have made this possible."

Managing Partner, Dejan Nikolić comments: "When we founded the firm more than twenty years ago, we believed our success would depend on our ability to recruit and develop the most talented lawyers from the region, and seeing someone's career evolve so fully within our organisation – from being a promising trainee to making Senior Partner – has been delightful to witness."