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In January and February 2020, Grant Thornton Baltic conducted a financial and tax due diligence for the Kyyrix OÜ, which has almost 30 years of experience in providing professional cleaning services in Tartu.

Grant Thornton Baltic OÜ experts conducted an analysis of the energy networks belonging to public undertakings at the request of the Strategy Unit of the Government Office of Estonia and it was funded from measure no. 12.2 “Development of quality of policy-making” of priority axis no. 12 “Administrative Capacity” of the Cohesion Fund’s operational programme 2014-2020. The initiator and partner of the project is the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.

ISS Eesti AS is the largest facility management and technical maintenance services and second largest cleaning services’ company in Estonia, whose customers include retail chains, educational institutions and large office and production buildings. Grant Thornton Baltic advised investors on the acquisition of ISS Estonia's business.

Grant Thornton Baltic advised Balti Spoon OÜ, one of the world's leading manufacturers of peeled and sliced veneer, on the acquisition of a Polish company Bracia Mrozik Sp. z o.o.

The European Union has adopted new rules on VAT that will simplify and facilitate e-commerce. The rules will come into effect in full on 1 January 2021, but companies that provide electronic services will be able to benefit from the rules already starting 1 January 2019.

It is extremely important for managers to pursue self-improvement. As the saying goes: a fish starts rotting from the head. Unfortunately, managerial culture in Estonia is not at a level we can be satisfied with. We have many companies where money and financial results are managed but where the people are not. Actually, instead of money and results, it’s people who should be managed. If so, the good results will not be long in coming.

This year, a number of large-scale purchase and sale transactions have provided much fodder for discussion in the media – Nelja Energia, Luminor and Utilitas are three examples. The large transactions always stand out, but this year has seen many mid-sized and small company acquisitions as well.

Although employer branding is seen as mainly the domain of personnel and marketing people, it isn’t only their function. Managers have just as important a role here, because it is managers who can leave employees with a good experience of the organisation as employer. Or the opposite – a negative experience, because Estonia has many organisations that have a substandard managerial culture and instead of leading people, they’re busy managing money and processes.

United Motors has purchased the distributor of Peugeot and Hyundai in Estonia. Grant Thornton Baltic provided advisory services for the transaction.

Next year, amendments to the Taxation Act are expected to enter into force. One of the amendments calls for more data to be added to the employment register, which will however increase the workload for accountants.

25 October will mark five months since the entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation . There was much confusion before that. Companies wondered whether employees’ birthdays could be printed out and tacked to the wall in the break room. Maybe Christmas presents could no longer be given to employees’ children because that, too, would require the children’s personal data to be “processed”.

Grant Thornton has released a new guide to help international entrepreneurs navigate transfer pricing regulations in different countries.

This year is the point where the economy peaked – it can’t get any better. We already see economic growth tapering off in Estonia, the EU and elsewhere. But will we lose our footing as we slide downhill or will we be able to softly glissade down the easy slopes?

From the 1st of September 2018, all Estonian companies will be required to submit data on their beneficial owners to the Commercial Register of Estonia.

In September, a new amendment to the Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Prevention Act will enter into force, requiring companies to disclose data on their beneficial owners.

According to the GDPR people have right to query data processors about the data they hold about them. People have right to ask what data a processor holds about them, for what purpose and what is done to the data. They also have a right to rectify and erase data. Data processor is obliged to reply within 30 days of the request being made to comply with the regulation.