Latin America Practice

Holland & Knight's Latin America Team is comprised of multicultural and multilingual attorneys, fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, and well versed in cultural differences, which allows us to offer a multitude of services to assist clients across all industry sectors to successfully do business throughout Latin America. We have more than 200 attorneys in the Latin America Practice, which includes members in our Bogotá, Mexico City and Monterrey offices, as well as professionals and attorneys in a number of our United States offices. The firm has a strong, long-standing commitment and connection to Latin America.

Our lawyers have been representing clients with interests in the region for more than 40 years. With our offices in Bogotá, Mexico City and Monterrey, we have built an extensive support network across the region, as well as forging long-standing relationships with nearly all of the principal law firms throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean. Our decades of experience in the region, combined with our extensive interdisciplinary practice and our regional and global networks assure our clients that they will have high-quality resources available to them when and where they are needed.

Our Capabilities

Holland & Knight's Latin America Team advises clients on a broad range of international matters as well as a broad range of regional activities, from establishing a business in an emerging market to expanding the presence of our multinational clients internationally. Our attorneys assist clients with mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private equity investments, international finance transactions, project finance, international taxation matters, regulatory and government matters, and international arbitration and dispute resolution. In addition, we provide comprehensive counsel for a broad range of international commercial and corporate transactions, labor and employment, intellectual property (IP), and regulatory and administrative matters, among other areas.

Bogotá Office

In 2012, we significantly expanded the breadth of our Latin America Practice capabilities with the opening of our Bogotá office. Holland & Knight is among the few U.S.-based law firms with an office in Colombia that offers a full range of legal services. Holland & Knight's Bogotá office provides high-quality counsel to companies doing inbound and outbound business in the region and abroad, in all aspects of their business operations. We regularly advise clients in transactional matters and international disputes, including cross-border deals and international trade; mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures; oil, gas and mining projects; environmental assessments, liability concerns and compliance; taxation; labor law; capital markets, venture capital and private equity investments; international licensing and franchising; project finance and foreign investment; complex corporate reorganizations and financial restructurings; IP, competition and antitrust matters; and litigation and arbitration.

In addition, our attorneys provide regulatory advice to foreign companies doing business in Colombia, as well as Colombian companies doing business abroad. We have one of the country's leading energy, natural resources and environmental practices, which includes regulatory and other local advice.

Mexico City and Monterrey Offices

Holland & Knight is one of the few U.S.-based law firms with a full-service offering in Mexico. Our team in Mexico City and Monterrey is an integral part of our Latin America Practice, has substantial experience across all Mexican business sectors and is enhanced by our established working relationships with leaders in Mexico's business and government areas.

Our attorneys routinely assess the complexity and skills required for each particular case, providing tailored legal advice as well as a full service and synergetic approach in order to best meet our client needs. Our attorneys have robust experience representing international and local clients across many industries in local and cross-border transactions. We promote teamwork and routinely employ collaboration among our corporate and financial services groups with various industry sector practices, a strategy that has allowed us to expand our service coverage and increase our attorney and legal professional head count by more than 60 percent during the last several years.

In addition, our attorneys have assisted the Mexican government in the analysis, design and drafting of key legislation and regulation currently in place, as well as with the implementation of several infrastructure projects. The Holland & Knight Mexico team was a leading participant in the formation of the Mexican securitization industry, and has provided representation in several first-ever transactions. In many cases, the structures that our Mexico team has designed for several large-scale transactions are now considered to be standard in the financial markets.

Select Latin America Representative Experience

• Advised Fibra UNO, Mexico's largest real estate investment trust, in connection with a $1 billion dual tranche (U.S. dollars and Mexican pesos), five-year sustainable revolving credit agreement that was named LatinFinance's "Financing Innovation of the Year"; the unsecured revolving credit facility incorporates a sustainability-linked pricing grid that reduces the borrowing spread if certain benchmarks are achieved each year and complies with the Loan Syndications and Trading Association's (LSTA) Sustainability Linked Loan Principles – the first of its kind for a Mexican borrower such as Fibra UNO
• Advised Fibra UNO on its international offering of US$650 million in senior notes, an issuance that includes the reopening of up to US$375 million at 4.950 percent yield to maturity, due in 2030, and US$275 million at 6.250 percent yield to maturity, due in 2050; both were issued in accordance with Rule 144A and Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933
• Represented PepsiCo on labor law and labor litigation matters throughout the country (before federal and local boards in 32 Mexican states), as well as advised on the restructuring of production plants and helped carry out significant collective personnel downsizings; our team has executed approximately 1,000 cases
• Advised Spanish telecom company Telefónica S.A. in connection with an unprecedented wholesale long-term deal with AT&T in Mexico; after a three-year transition period, Telefónica will realize savings in the amount of US$254 million per year
• Represented Parks Desarrolladora, one of Mexico's major developers, in connection with a syndicated loan facility for the development of two hotels in Chemuyil (Riviera Maya); the transaction involved negotiations with Banco Sabadell, BanCoppel and Grupo Posadas, who will act as hotel operators and managers for the project, as well as the drafting and/or negotiation of the loan facility agreement and licensing, operation, leasing and construction agreements
• Representation of a leading provider of construction, technology and infrastructure for the energy industry regarding Colombian law issues in an International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration brought by the state-owned refinery
• Advised Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional (FDN), the Colombian development bank, as lender in several project finance transactions that are part of Colombia's fourth-generation (4G) infrastructure plan as well as the first project finance structure implemented in Colombia for a nonconventional renewable energy project
• Representation of a major Chinese mining company in a top-level due diligence process – including mining, environmental, antitrust, corporate, real estate, litigation, contractual and social issues with respect to one of the biggest gold mining projects in Colombia – and additional advice for the potential acquisition of a target company in Colombia
• Representation of Drummond Co. in all aspects of its Colombian mining operations and infrastructure projects, from joint venture negotiations to operate and manage rail operations for the Atlantic Railway Network in Colombia to the development of a port facility, as well as assisting in numerous environmental, regulatory and commercial matters incident to the company's mining and operating activities, and the resolution of commercial disputes
• Representation of Laureate Education Inc., the largest international network of degree-granting higher education institutions, on its agreement with Fundación Nasser para el Desarrollo Educativo de Centroamerica (Fundación Nasser) to transfer control of Fundaempresa, which manages Laureate's operations in Honduras, including Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana (UNITEC) and Centro Universitario Tecnológico (CEUTEC)
• Represented Canadian value retailer Dollarama Inc. in its acquisition of 50.1 percent interest in Latin America value retailer Dollarcity, a deal that gives Dollarama, which has 1,236 locations across Canada, a second-growth platform to complement its existing Canadian growth strategy

Leading Lawyers on Your Side

Members of Holland & Knight's Latin America Team have been selected for inclusion in leading industry publications based on their work in the region. A number of our attorneys are ranked in Chambers Latin America, Chambers Global, Latin Lawyer 250, IFLR1000, The Legal 500 Latin America, The Best Lawyers in Mexico and The Best Lawyers in Colombia.