Ion Nestor, now almost 57, is one of the most respected lawyersin Romania, having gone through the "storms" of the bigprivatisations, such as that of Petrom, BCR, and Romtelecom.
But the route to forming a team of over 100 lawyers and anaround 15 million-euro business started in the same simple manneras most businesses developed by Romanian entrepreneurs did, in thefirst few days after the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
"We decided to become consultants before there were anyprivately-held businesses, in February 1990. I took a step backfrom my work as a barrister without giving it up completely,though, and we started to organise like we knew any company wassupposed to," recounts Ion Nestor, founding partner of law firmNestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen.
The lawyer, together with his wife, Manuela Nestor, were relyingon experience accumulated within the Institutul Roman deConsultanta (Romanian Consulting Institute) Romconsult, which usedto handle Romania's engineering and services exports.
The company went from drawing up documentation for theestablishment of trading companies to corporate consultingservices, with its first major corporate client being QuadrantAmroq Beverages.
The next major step in the company's business came in the summerof 1994, when the Nestors decided to become associated withAmerican lawyers Andrew Kingston and Patricia Petersen, with themerger becoming effective on January 1st of 1995 and leading to thecreation of NNKP.
At the beginning of the noughties two events had an impact onthe company's activity - the withdrawal of the Americans and a newmerger with Ana Diculescu Sova's firm, which was to add a D to thefirm's current name - NNDKP.
During its over 20 years of existence, the firm run by Nestorwas considered a model of stability. However, in the autumn of lastyear the first crack occurred in the organisation, when FranciscPeli, Carmen Peli and Cristina Filip, three of the partners,together with a small group of lawyers, decided to leave the firmand start their own business.
On the positive side, the separation occurred in 2008, at theend of the 2003-2008 period, when business lawyers wereoverburdened by the large volumes of mergers and acquisitions.
"Now we are all very far from that - we are much less crowded,which allows us to do things we couldn't do well enough in the pastfew years - training programmes, internal organisation,communication and human resource policies (...)," Nestor says.
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