Russia and the CIS

A number of our lawyers, consultants, and staff interested in these countries speak Georgian, Mongolian, Russian and Ukrainian. Firmwide our lawyers, consultants and staff speak more than 40 languages.

Overview

McGuireWoods’ lawyers have been active in Eurasia since the mid 1980s — providing legal and consulting services to entrepreneurs, investors (both foreign and domestic), multinationals and government clients. Members of the firm have participated in the leadership of the development of modern legal representation in the region. In addition to being among the first expatriate lawyers on the ground, our native lawyers of the region were among the first regional lawyers to receive Western legal training.

We were involved in many of the momentous early private-public initiatives related to development of natural resources, utilities and communications, as well as with major infrastructure privatizations. Our work helped develop the Ports of Murmansk and St. Petersburg, fund the $14 billion Caspian Pipeline Consortium, close multi-billion air and space joint ventures, obtain licences for the mobile telephone supplier in Kazakhstan and negotiate orbital slots for telecommunications satellites.

Our lawyers and consultants have developed contacts and associations throughout the regional legal, accounting, banking, finance and business communities, as well as with regulatory and government agencies (including through our memberships of the LNI global legal network). The firm’s multilingual legal team members know well the cultural, ethnic, environmental, technological, financial and legal issues that pose challenges to working effectively in the region.

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 the US and Europe. In particular, 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.

McGuireWoods helps guide clients through these dynamic markets having represented clients in scores of multi-billion dollar transactions including foreign and domestic investment in the region, as well as regionally sourced billions of dollars invested abroad. Our experience includes private and public equity and debt finance, mergers and acquisitions, upstream natural resource extraction, resource transportation issues, and downstream refining and retail distribution development, fund development, project finance, restructurings, privatizations, tax matters, commercial regulatory and legislative matters, international litigation and arbitration, and intellectual property issues. We have particular strengths in the local energy, and oil and gas sectors (through our Energy Industry team); mining and metals (through our Mining Industry team); technology and communications (through our Technology Industry team); and the construction and real estate sectors (through our Construction Industry team).

We have represented clients, with our litigation and arbitration experience, in the regional courts of commercial arbitration, the Supreme Court of Arbitration of Russia and before arbitration bodies in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan Tajikistan and Ukraine. We have also represented clients before both the criminal and civil courts in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere in the region. We have also represented client interests before international arbitration tribunals in Stockholm, Vienna, Geneva, Zurich, Paris, New York, London and several other international locations. Similarly, we have represented regional clients in domestic jurisdictions throughout the US and Europe. We represented the Government of Kazakhstan in its international arbitration needs for several years.

The firm regularly represents clients in highly sensitive matters. We manage a significant roster of related project finance work, mediation, internal investigation, international antifraud and global anticorruption work for individuals, institutional investors and private concerns.

We also advise governments in the oil, gas, mining, real estate, financial services and international reinsurance sectors.