McGuireWoods’ International practice has extensive experience in dealing with clients and matters in Canada.
In addition to English, a number of our lawyers, consultants and staff interested in Canada speak French. Firmwide our lawyers, consultants and staff speak more than 40 languages.
The majority of the work we undertake relating to Canada corresponds with our principal activities throughout the rest of the world. We represent public and private businesses engaged in day to day corporate activity, conducting banking and finance activities, mergers and acquisitions, corporate and commercial transactions, fund development, corporate finance, commercial contracts, cross border sales, tax advice, litigation and antitrust advice.
Our capital markets and finance team assists with advice on private equity, IPOs, debt finance and project finance needs, drawing upon especially deep resources in Europe and the US. Our teams in the US, London and Brussels offer insight and depth in financing and floating companies, acting for investment banks, syndicated and asset based lenders, nomads, brokers and sponsors, as well as market entrants. For equity capital markets, we focus on the NYSE and NASDAQ, as well as on the London Stock Exchange, AIM, PLUS, GXG, JSE, NSE, SGX and a variety of international and regional exchanges, including working with local Canadian counsel in relation to the CNSX, Montreal, Toronto, TSX Venture and NASDAQ Canada exchanges.
McGuireWoods brings deep legal background in the extractive industries. Our mining practice includes activities related to base-metal, precious metals, rare earth minerals, coal, uranium, and construction aggregates industries. Our oil and gas team brings substantial upstream and downstream experience supporting majors and independent extractors, transportation, commodities and distribution industries in critically endowed regions, including in the Shale O&G Industry, where our team is led from our Pittsburgh office. This, combined with our US mining capability, gives our team deep technical and sector expertise.
McGuireWoods’ energy practice focuses on regulation, deregulation and restructuring of public and private utilities; on the development, acquisition, sale and financing of natural gas, power generation and other energy facilities; and on the marketing and trading of energy commodities. We represent governments, utilities, industrial energy consumers, in project development and finance, international energy development, environmental, land use, contract negotiation, taxation and privatization matters.
McGuireWoods lawyers have substantial experience in multinational litigation, international arbitration and dispute resolution. Our dispute resolution practitioners are experienced in managing litigation in multiple jurisdictions, including Canada.
McGuireWoods has developed state of the art corporate compliance programmes which contain emerging standards of corporate social responsibility as evolving from the UN, US, EU, as well as trade association standards and NGOs. We regularly advise on global fraud and corruption issues, including the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and UK Bribery Act 2010 (UKBA) and on UN, EU and US economic and trade sanction penalties.
Firm partner, Vivian Robinson QC, based in London, previously served as first general counsel at the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) where he spearheaded development of the SFO’s enforcement policy under the UKBA and acted as primary liaison to the public and business communities.
McGuireWoods lawyers use their experience and knowledge of Canada as well as their connections and contacts, to provide a seamless and cost-effective full range of legal services to our clients and, where appropriate, engage the assistance of local law firms, including fellow members of the LNI global legal network.