Latham Again Named a Top International Firm in Latin America

Latham & Watkins has again earned recognition as a top-five firm in Latinvex’s Top International Law Firms List, an annual ranking of the leading international firms doing business in Latin America. Leveraging the strength of its global platform across the region, the firm remained at #1 for energy work, while also earning top rankings for arbitration, banking, capital markets, corporate/M&A, and project finance work in Latin America.

The publication selected honorees based on a combination of factors, including value, prominence, and scope of work in the region, as well as references among clients and peers, according to Latinvex.

Latham’s Latin America Practice has recently handled a number of prominent matters in the region involving diverse disciplines, industries, and geographies, including a number of transactions recognized as deals of the year in 2019 by various publications. The team’s work over the past year includes advising:

• The Republic of Colombia, in high-profile ICSID arbitrations under the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement relating to mining activities in the protected area of the Santurban moorlands
• RECOPE, Costa Rica’s state-owned refining company, in an ICC arbitration against CNPCI, China’s state-owned oil and gas company, which resulted in an important victory for RECOPE that concluded a long-running commercial dispute
• Credit Suisse, in connection with a multiple-tranche Ps.7.4 billion syndicated financing for Grupo Gondi, a Mexico City-based paper packaging company, which was governed by New York law but denominated and funded in Mexican pesos
• BofA Securities, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley, in equity and debt capital markets transactions valued at more than US$2 billion by Millicom International Cellular, a NASDAQ-listed provider of cable, mobile voice, and data services in nine Latin American countries
• Dragoneer Investment Group, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a private placement of preferred stock of NASDAQ-listed MercadoLibre, Inc., Latin America’s leading e-commerce technology company, part of a US$1 billion capital raise
• Madrid-headquartered Telefónica, in US$2.3 billion of M&A sales throughout Latin America, including operations in Guatemala and El Salvador to América Móvil and operations in Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua to Millicom International Cellular
• Northland Power, the Toronto-based power producer, in its US$1.05 billion acquisition of Empresa de Energía de Boyacá, one of the 10 largest electricity distributors in Colombia with more than 120 municipalities under service
• Brookfield, in the financing of the Santiago, Chile-based Cerro Dominador Project, the first-ever concentrated solar power plant in Latin America
• Scotiabank, in the financing of London Stock Exchange-listed ContourGlobal’s acquisition from Monterrey, Mexico-based Alpek of a consortium of natural gas-fired combined heat and power plants in Tamaulipas and Veracruz, Mexico