Katerina Malanou is a partner in our Corporate, and TMT & Intellectual Property groups, where she leads our advisory, corporate and contractual work for multinational companies in the areas of payment services, food and beverage, consumer goods, and tourism.

She is widely respected for her commercial insight and she puts this to work in advising clients and developing practical solutions in matters relating to regulation, and advertising, promotion and marketing. Prior to becoming a partner, Katerina spent two years on secondment to Google Greece, where she supported the company on issues ranging from privacy, data protection, GDPR and removals to marketing practices, policy, internet law and day-to-day commercial activities. She has also played an important role in helping Cardlink establish itself as the largest payments network services provider in Greece.

She also has experience in representing clients with regulatory bodies and Courts.

Katerina was recently certified by the Department of Economics of the University of Athens in the field of “Basic Principles of Compliance”.

Areas of expertise

Katerina uses her business acumen and legal expertise to advise many of our large corporate clients on their day-to-day needs, ensuring they remain compliant while helping them to achieve the most effective commercial arrangements. Her client list features many leading international businesses including Goodyear Tires, Procter and Gamble, Dow Chemical, Google, Whirlpool, Miele, Heineken, Sony, as well as leading Greek entities such as Quest Holdings and Cardlink.

In fact, Katerina has been instrumental in the successful growth of Cardlink, advising on contract drafting, privacy, commercial issues, and negotiations with the main payments industry stakeholders, including the Bank of Greece as the regulator, the four systemic banks, trade associations and merchants, and the major card operators.

Notable Corporate cases


  • Advising Google on all its operations in Greece under the regulatory legal framework.
  • Advising Sony Music on its group restructuring through intragroup share transfer transactions and subsequent mergers by absorption of EMI Greek subsidiaries by Sony.
  • Advised Quest Holdings on a due diligence report on a company active in the renewable energy market.
  • Advising El Sewedy Electric in the legal due diligence and acquisition of four SPVs currently operating wind farms in Greece.
  • Advised Chemical Company Dow Hellas on the local aspects of the merger between Dow Chemical Company and DuPont.
  • Advising Whirlpool on Indesit Greece business transfer agreement and the subsequent merger by absorption of Indesit Greece by Whirlpool Hellas.
  • Completed the due diligence on BriQ, a REIC, to be listed on the Athens Stock exchange for the purposes of the prospectus to be filed with the Hellenic Capital Markets Commission for the listing of the shares. We acted for Eurobank on this matter.
  • Advised on the supply-chain restructuring of the business of Diversey Inc. a provider of commercial cleaning sanitation and hygiene solutions for businesses.

Katerina is highly active in this sector, supporting major internet businesses and others in protecting their reputations and assets – including intellectual property and rights – in this fast-evolving area of law. Her experience as a two-year secondee at Google has given her a detailed insight into issues facing internet platforms and online content providers – both hosts and originators – and of the best legal tools for protecting and advancing clients’ interests in the digital age.

Notable TMT & Intellectual Property cases


TMT

  • We represented two major Greek banks in the joint venture negotiations related to payment cards systems. We also advised a Bank-owned subsidiary on a high-profile outsourcing transaction with a global payment processing company.
  • We settled on behalf on an internet encyclopedia long-disputed takedown requests on the basis of defamation.
  • We recovered the domain name segafredo.gr for its trademark owner
  • We advised clients on cybercrime discovery requests and take down requests of allegedly defamatory material.

TMT Litigation

  • For the eleventh consecutive year, we have responded to and defended before the Hellenic and the Courts a number of removals requests which were filed against our client, the leading USA search engine.
  • The first case ever to be litigated in Greece for the issue of the legal age of consent under the GDPR that was filed against the leading USA search engine.
  • We were retained to defend several complaints filed against the leading USA search engine for the association of personal data and images in the search engine with allegedly defamatory words or phrases relating to sexual orientation, profession and criminal convictions.

DPO Services

  • We provided Data Protection Officer (DPO) services to the most prominent group of companies in the Greek health services sector, which includes maternity and gynecology clinics, children’s hospital, general hospital and IVF center.
  • We provided GDPR consulting services to a leading brewery in Greece relating to data transfers, GPS use and access card use by employees, novel services and applications, the company’s website, digital contests, marketing events, IP licenses etc.
  • We provided GDPR consulting services to an electronic payments company upon the entering into force of the GDPR with respect to the client’s policies, contracts, consent forms, data processing agreements etc.
  • We reviewed and assessed a global FMCG group’s internal policies and platforms, marketing practices, digital contests, employment contracts, cooperation contracts under the GDPR rules.

Data Protection / Privacy / IP

  • Advised Cardlink S.A. on the creation of an innovation hub. We are providing wide-ranging and proactive advice in response to the client’s needs.
  • Advised Goodyear Tyres on commercial and contract law issues and other matters relating to data protection and employment law in Greece.
  • We settled with the DPA of the Greek part of a major privacy breach incident in the entertainment sector that led to data leak for more than 8,000 Greek internet users.
  • We reviewed and assessed the ideas submitted to the leading bank in Greece from an IP and privacy point perspective.
  • Retained by a global electronics’ company to advise on levies under the copyright act on electronic devices and to submit relevant data to the Greek Copyright Organization.
  • We have also provided counselling to ISP’s on the IP and privacy issues arising from their online novel services and represented them before the Hellenic DPA.

Notable M&A cases


Public MA and Privatizations

  • Advised Goodyear Tyres on tax issues arising in the course of its daily operations; call-off stock arrangements business restructuring between the group companies in Europe, and their impact on corporate and VAT taxation were examined; compliance with Greek rules transposing EU VAT provisions on the subject matter recently enacted, and corporate taxation rules were examined to discuss due implementation in Greece.

Related News & Events

LLF is proud to join the Diversity Charter Greece

08-Feb-2022
  • Athens Bar Association
  • LLM in Commercial Law, University of Heidelberg – 2000
  • LLM in Civil Law, School of Law, University of Athens
  • LLB, School of Law, University of Athens – 1996

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