The firm… has an important international focus and is experienced in complex multi-jurisdictional transactions.
The team punches above its weight in terms of the size and complexity of the cases it handles.
Provides sophisticated advice on matters that require special and personal attention from skilled and experienced hands-on partners and brilliant associates.
The firm counsels companies and their boards or main shareholders with respect to their most difficult and sensitive corporate issues, sophisticated commercial and financial transactions and most critical conflicts. We develop relationships with our clients that go far beyond a particular transaction or conflict to a strong long term bond of trust and reliance.
The personalized nature of the firm’s practice leads us to carefully select and limit the matters we undertake and to exclude repetitive, standardized transactions or legal proceedings. Our partners and associates are complete, well-rounded corporate lawyers with a broad range of skills and expertise as opposed to specialists in subparts of particular kinds of transactions or matters.
All or our members are skilled in both counseling and litigation. This has lead the firm to have an outstanding success over big firms in both complex litigation and transactions. Especially as to sophisticated cross border financial conflicts that may not be properly handled by big firms’ litigation departments, – who are generally not acquainted with sophisticated international financial issues – or by big firms’ banking or financial teams who are generally not skilled in litigation, nor by the interaction between them, due to the lack of coordination and agility that this entails.
When it comes to transactions, this unique feature enables our team to draft each and every single clause with the prospective of granting our clients’ success in a potential conflict. This, paradoxically, entails a significant deterrent from litigating against our clients.
The skill, reputation and commitment of the partners and the selection of the associates among the brightest and most creative of their generation have lead to a consistent success of the firm in terms of transaction and conflict dollar volume, yet maintaining the boutique style kind of service.
Lucio Leverone
Peers note that he is a ‘brilliant mind and unique strategist’. Sources add
‘He is an extremely dynamic and well rounded lawyer who is both creative and dedicated’. ‘Corporate law expert with disputes experience’. He is praised for his intelligence and the personalized nature of his advice’. Praised by clients as ‘an outstanding corporate and finance lawyer and an exceptional litigator’. They add:‘He is obsessive with details and brilliant when it comes to arguing a case’. The ‘solid and complete’ Lucio Leverone … is lauded by clientes, who say: ‘He is always one step ahead and has an amazing command of difficult situations
Lucio Leverone graduated in 1988 from the Argentine Catholic University (with honours) and got a Master in Laws (LLM) from Columbia University in the City of New York in 1993. He first joined Estudio Alegría where he was actively involved in several of the most sounded corporate conflicts, insolvency and complex commercial litigation of such time.
At the burst of the Argentine boom in 1991, he joined Gallo & Bruchou (later Bruchou, & Funes de Rioja) and then Hope, Duggan & Silva, where he became a partner in 2000. During 1992-1993 he was an associate at Slaughter & May’s office in New York.
Mr. Leverone represented local and foreign clients in many of the most relevant transactions that took place during the 90s. In capital markets, he represented the underwriters in the most sounded initial public offerings such as Buenos Aires Embotelladora Argentina (the first I.P.O. of the 90s), YPF S.A. (the largest initial public offering in Argentine history), Transportadora de Gas del Sur S.A. and Siderar S.A. (among many others) and was actively involved in the development of the first Argentine securitization transactions and in the drafting of the Argentine trust law. He also represented Cervecería y Maltería Quilmes S.A. in the takeover and delisting process of Buenos Aires Embotelladora S.A.
As to M&A he was in charge of the acquisition of the Roberts Group by HSBC and the sale to Citicorp Equity Investments of the IRHE`s participation in Cointel S.A. (holding company of Telefónica de Argentina S.A.), the acquisition of Gas Natural Ban S.A. by LG&E, the sale by Southern Cross Group’s shares in The Value Brands Company to Alicorp Group, the sale of Grupo Roman’s shares in Exolgan to Port of Singapore Authority, the sale of Deautos S.A to Grupo Clarín, the sale of MDE Network to Hexagon AB, the earn-in and takeover by South32 of Minera Sud, the cross border capitalization of Buenbit, the transaction among Patagonia Gold, Ciminas and Minsud regarding the Gastrenor Project, most of the acquisitions carried out by Grupo de Servicios y Transacciones (GST), among many others.
Mr. Leverone is an undisputed leader in the Argentine M&A market, particularly regarding deals that involve cross border clients or issues that require full partner dedication. He has personally closed several deals that range from $100 million to more than half a billion dollars (namely some of the biggest M&A related to Argentina or Argentine clients). He has particularly been praised for his deep understanding of the clients’ business goals and for having created significant value from legal and tax engineering, strategic and negotiating skills and sharp drafting.
He also advised local and international banking institutions and borrowers in several of the largest structured loans and project finance projects (such as Líneas de Transmisión del Litoral S.A., Termoandes S.A. and Atlántida Comunicaciones S.A.) and several of the most complex debt restructuring transactions (such as, among others, Sociedad Comercial del Plata, Parafina del Plata, Scotiabank Quilmes, Productos Sudamericanos, La Plata Cereal, Fibral Chaco S.A., San Miguel, Milkaut and Zanella Hnos.).
As to complex conflicts and litigation, Mr. Leverone has personally handled and won many of the most sounded inter banking conflicts of the last years against most of the major Argentine law firms (both before the courts and before arbitration panels). Representing a major European bank against a local leading bank, he won the sounded Argentine Supreme Court leading case “Banco Europeo vs. Banco de Galicia” that rejected and declared unconstitutional, the ‘pesification’ of inter-banking currency forward agreements that had been enacted by the Argentine Government and Congress.
Mr. Leverone has therefore a unique and wide combined experience in sophisticated cross-border transaction practice and complex conflict and litigation areas.
Mr. Leverone is an undisputed leader in the field of corporate governance strategic planning.
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