Gvinadze & Partners LLC

The firm: Gvinadze & Partners is a leading Georgian business law firm with a long and successful history of serving inward investment in Georgia. In this crucial post-independence period of Georgia’s development, the firm has represented the lion’s share of a truly diverse international clientele, ranging from international NGOs and diplomatic missions to industrial giants, multilateral lending institutions and multi-billion oil and gas consortia. The firm’s experience is equally diverse and all-inclusive, ranging from start up guidance and incorporation of numerous investment vehicles to representation in some of the most noteworthy and complicated projects of the region in the past two decades. Gvinadze & Partners is equally well-known for its dispute resolution expertise, having acted in some of the highest profile disputes in the Georgian courts as well as in international arbitration, and having provided quality support to many cross-border arbitration and litigation matters involving Georgian law, including successful enforcement of a number of foreign arbitral awards in Georgia.

Throughout the firm’s various name changes and reincarnations since the early 1990s, its core value and the key element to its success has been the unparalleled and uncompromised quality of the firm’s legal work. Indeed, ever since the early days of Gvinadze & Partners’ legacy firm GCG Law Office, its law practice has been known as the highest quality legal service provider in Georgia. The firm is proud that in a difficult transitional period it has been at the forefronts of the development of Georgia’s newly born legal profession, and has aspired to the highest standards of professional ethics with the clients and peers alike.

Areas of practice: Gvinadze & Partners prides itself on over two decades of extensive private practice experience in all key areas of business law, such as corporate and M&A, banking and finance, capital markets, energy and infrastructure, real estate and construction, tax and customs, dispute resolution, intellectual property, employment and competition. The firm is led by three partners and is supported by highly experienced counsel and associates.

Perhaps the most telling example of the firm’s profound expertise in virtually every area of business law is its role as lead Georgian legal counsel throughout the planning, negotiation and implementation of all the major oil and gas pipeline projects in transit through Georgia – the Baku-Supsa, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC), and South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) projects, which have put Georgia firmly on the energy map of Europe and assured its strategic place as the nexus of the modern silk road. The firm’s 15 years of intensive work on these projects of the century has involved the widest possible spectrum of commercial law practice, including drafting, negotiation and implementation of complex intergovernmental and host government agreements, legislative drafting, representation in multi-billion secured syndicated financing, elaboration, documentation and implementation of detailed land acquisition strategies, detailed advice on a myriad of real property, tax and customs, environmental, labour, permitting and contractual matters, and finally successful resolution of hundreds of compensation, environmental and right of way disputes in the Georgian courts.

Nick Gvinadze (managing partner) with nearly a quarter of a century in busy private practice, he has accumulated abundant experience in the whole spectrum of both Georgian and cross-border commercial law, with particular focus on energy, infrastructure, tax and dispute resolution. Nick has advised on a number of key foreign investment projects in Georgia, including major oil and gas transportation projects in the Caspian region, and has acted in a number of higher profile proceedings in the Georgian Courts as well as in international arbitration.

Sophie Panjikidze (partner) having started with the legacy firm Georgian Consulting Group (GCG Law Office) back in 2002, Sophie has been responsible for successful incorporation, reorganization and winding up of many dozens of foreign investment vehicles, and has advised on a number of complex cross-border corporate and finance transactions as well as major privatization matters. With nearly 15 years of extensive private practice experience, Sophie has acquired valuable expertise in corporate, banking and finance, contracts, real estate, labor, insurance, IP and competition law matters, and has also been instrumental in supporting the firm’s extensive litigation practice with important background research and due diligence.