Laimonas Skibarka

Professional highlights

Client-centric approach and collaboration. I foster a client-centric approach, a service-minded culture, and collaboration between Sorainen and client teams. I strongly believe in the saying “collaboration spreads wealth”. Always eager to learn about clients’ businesses and sectors, I champion our firm’s strategic goal of developing sector groups – teams of lawyers dedicated to specific industries that can ensure a better understanding of our clients’ businesses and add value for our clients.

Strategic projects in the Baltic region. During my legal career (which also included working at the London office of international law firm Allen & Overy in 2005-2006), I have been privileged to lead our teams in various strategic projects in the Baltic region. These included the creation of shared service centres by Barclays and Western Union (the first “flagship investors” in this sector in Lithuania), strategic acquisitions by Providence Equity Partners (which acquired Bitė, a major mobile operator in Lithuania and Latvia, as well as All Media Baltics – currently TV3 Group, the largest media group in the Baltics), REWE (which acquired IKI, a major retail chain in Lithuania and Latvia), and many others.

Among market leaders in M&A. International M&A database Mergermarket ranked me among the top two individual lawyers by the number and value of M&A transactions advised on in Lithuania (42 deals with a total disclosed value of EUR 3.057 billion during 2005-2023) and also among the top three in the Baltic region. I am grateful to the clients who rely on our advice in these significant M&A, private equity and venture capital transactions.

Recognised by international legal directories. International legal directories have ranked me among the most prominent Lithuanian lawyers for almost two decades. Chambers Europe: “Market observers applaud [his] expert legal knowledge and strategic thinking, saying ‘he is more than a lawyer; he has that rare skill of not only pointing out risks but also offering solutions’.” The Legal 500: “He has ‘excellent local knowledge that he is able to convey to multinational clients’.”

Leadership. I was privileged to lead this firm between 2015 and 2023 when Sorainen became the leading law firm in the Baltic region in terms of revenue and number of lawyers, as well as by rankings in the major legal directories – Chambers, Legal500, IFLR, and International Tax Review. The Financial Times ranked Sorainen, the only law firm from Baltic and Nordic region, among Top 30 most innovative law firms in Europe. In 2022, Sorainen was the first law firm in the Baltics to win the Mergermarket award of “M&A Legal Adviser of the Year in Central and Eastern Europe”. All these achievements by the great Sorainen team were appraised at The Lawyer European Awards 2023 where I got the distinction “Highly Commended” (2nd place) in the category “European Managing Partner of the Year”.