Professor Jan Dědič Named Patron of Czech Business26/04/12 / News
Professor Jan Dědič, a partner at law firm Kocián Šolc Balaštík, was recently honoured with the 2012 Patron of Czech Business award. The business community particularly noted his goal to simplify registration in the Commercial Register and his long-term efforts to clean up Czech commercial law.
The Patron of Czech Business award is given within the framework of two competitions that support small and medium-sized businesses, Vodafone’s “Firm of the Year” and Era’s “Entrepreneur of the Year”. Both competitions are organized by the Czech business newspaper Hospodářské noviny.
Allowing direct record entries to be made in the Commercial Register, which notaries would newly be authorized to do, will speed up and make simpler the process of establishing a company and replacing an executive or the amount of registered capital. Thanks to such changes, the business conditions in the Czech Republic will become closer to those in developed countries.
“Ours was just an idea rather than a particular plan compliant with the legislative rules of the Government. However, the Ministry of Justice, at which the wording of the act is being prepared, is of the same opinion. If the plan is put into practice, the useless barriers that slowed down the process of making changes in the Commercial Register will be removed, even if they were based on an underlying public document. The whole process could also be made cheaper,” said Professor Dědič.
One of the leading experts in the Czech Republic in the field of commercial law, Professor Dědič is also co-author of the new Act on Commercial Corporations, which gives shareholders greater freedom in arranging their company’s internal legal relations. This act, together with the new Civil Code, constitutes the cornerstone of private law recodification in the Czech Republic, which will become effective in 2014.
Professor Dědič is also the author of the amendment to the Act on Commercial Company Transformations, which since the beginning of this year has simplified company transactions, both intrastate and cross-border, and made them less expensive. He also took part in preparing the recent amendment to the Commercial Code, which regulates the concurrence of positions as a member of a company body and an employee.
Professor Dědič has been the recipient of numerous other awards in the past, including Lawyer of the Year for 2006 in the category of commercial law in the annual competition organized by the Czech Bar Association and epravo.cz. He was also named one of the Czech Republic’s five most influential lawyers in a 2007 survey carried out by Hospodářské noviny.
