Hassans

Corporate and Commercial

Tim Garcia is a Partner of Hassans International Law Firm Limited (since 2014) and leads our team specialising in international cross-border corporate, commercial and tax work. His clients are primarily ‘blue-chip’ multinationals, major private equity houses, and substantial family offices, who rely on him as a considered, innovative and practical advisor, as well as trusted non-executive director for many of their entities.  The Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (as regulator) have also recently admitted him as a licensed insolvency practitioner with the ability to act as liquidator for members’ voluntary, solvent liquidations (with Tim having also afforded extensive legal advisory assistance in the conduct of ~ 100 voluntary liquidations of Gibcos, many with cross-border elements).

His expertise (which also covers all Gibraltar tax aspects as well as its interplay with a large variety of jurisdictions with which Gibraltar companies and individuals may interact) includes corporate substance and governance, structuring, servicing and divestment of investments, employee stock options, re-domiciliations, relocations (and establishment by way of branch or otherwise) of businesses and individuals to Gibraltar (in both the corporate and private client space), cross-border mergers, M&A, financing and re-structuring transactions (including in Chapter 11 scenarios), liquidations and broader insolvency aspects, limited partnerships, as well as a whole range of general commercial transactions.

Some of his recent work highlights include his role as lead Gibraltar adviser on:

• PE (and wider Gibraltar) tax analysis and memorandum of advice to a luxury vehicles company regarding intended changes to their business model (involving Spain and Gibraltar);
• Gibraltar insolvency analysis in relation to group practices involving a Gibraltar operating company part of a leading professional crypto exchange and services provider;
• a business combination of a SPAC with a leading technology and investment group in the digital assets sector (within which a Gibraltar company plays a primary role);
• the establishment of a place of business in Gibraltar for a dual NYSE and LSE listed leading commercial legal finance provider;
• an acquisition by way of merger of substantial interests in a bitcoin mining group by an information technology company;
• a divestment and optimised repatriation of proceeds of container-ship interests by a leading NYSE listed global alternative investment management firm;
• a technical and extensive restructuring of an NYSE listed American manufacturing company, including carefully managed liquidation processes in light of potential Chinese indirect transfer tax considerations;
• extensive and technical Gibraltar law advice and assistance (including regarding financial assistance and related directors’ duties considerations) in the context of a USCo’s purchase of a trading Gibco part of a software company group;
• the repatriation of returns of capital to investors (including UK investors) in circumstances where the form and mechanism of such repatriation was critical to the potential tax treatment of the same in the hands of certain of the recipients (so as to make it plain that it was indeed truly a return of capital and not a distribution, which could otherwise have attracted adverse tax consequences);
• a Gibraltar court-sanctioned share premium reduction for a group entity of an AIM listed leading global Talent Acquisition and Managed Workforce Solutions provider;
• a complex (in lieu of challenges to ultimately reconcile differences between the respective common law and civil law systems) re-domiciliation by way of continuation into Switzerland of a hitherto Gibraltar vehicle (with a net value of circa USD300 million) within a leading, international medical device company;
• Gibraltar legal/tax advisory and corporate administrative assistance with the redomiciliation by way of continuation of a Gibco to Italy for a leading wind power operator in Italy and one of the leaders on the European market; and
• an intra-group Gibraltar court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement (for an Oslo Stock Exchange listed subsea engineering, construction and services company serving the offshore energy industry) allowing for the merger of two Gibraltar entities by the parent’s absorption of its subsidiary without its liquidation, such as to avoid (by way of deferral and transference to the resulting merged entity) the crystallising of a pure accounting loss in a manner acceptable under international accounting standards.

Career

Tim is a University of Nottingham graduate (which included an Erasmus year studying Spanish Law at the Universitat de Valencia in Spain) and endeavours to balance his workload with his young family and his various musical and sporting interests (having represented Gibraltar internationally in both). Tim completed his Bar Vocational Course at the Inns of Courts School of Law in London. A member of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple and inaugural Chairman of the Gibraltar Law Students Association, Tim was called to the Bar in England & Wales and Gibraltar in 2006, joining Hassans in the same year.

English and Spanish