About

Number of years practice:
20+
Principal practice areas:
Corporate and M&A, banking and finance, capital markets, project
Languages spoken: French, English and Arabic

What is the geographical focus of your practice in Africa?

North and Francophone Africa, West Africa and Central Africa.

Please describe the most important matters you have worked on in the African market in the last two years, including your role and the significance of the matter (if any) to the development of business and law.

We are advising a consortium comprising of Spanish company Abengoa and investment fund InfraMaroc (CDG Group) on the financing of a seawater desalination plant in Morocco. The purpose of the plant is to provide irrigation and drinking water supply in the Grand Agadir and Souss-Massa regions.

We are also advising one of the real estate players in Africa, in relation to new operations in Cameroon and Ivory Coast. The real estate firm won contracts in Cameroon for the construction of hospitals and social housing, and in Ivory Coast for the development of a program of numerous social housings.

In terms of project financing, we are advising Masen on the financing of the Noor Midelt project for an aggregate capacity of 800 MW of solar hybrid CSP and photovoltaic technologies. Noor Midelt is the first complex that specifies hybrid plants including both CSP and photovoltaic with minimum of five hours storage. We also advised Masen on all construction issues including the negotiation of an EPC contract and property rights and EPC as part of Morocco’s successful solar vision and the first issuance of green bonds in Morocco.

What differentiates your practice from that of other private practice lawyers?

Our presence in Africa offers full-service capabilities across key industry sectors. We have experience of working in over 45 African jurisdictions both advising on transactions and ongoing commercial operations, also assisting our clients to build their businesses both on the continent and internationally. We continue to dominate on matters and transactions across the full spectrum of practice areas, and we have a strong physical presence in Africa, with offices across the continent and several alliances with local law firms.

Our work is undertaken by specialist teams based primarily in Paris and Casablanca but spending significant amounts of time “on the ground”, working closely with clients and local law firms.

We specialise in financial institutions, energy, infrastructure, mining and commodities, transport, technology and innovation, and we operate both in civil law Francophone jurisdictions in North and sub-Saharan Africa and in those African states whose legal system is based on Anglo-American common law. We are comfortable working in French, English and Arabic.

The growth of our Africa practice has been driven
not only by our activity in the mining and energy sectors, but also through our involvement in many
of the market leading financial and telecoms
deals. In addition, we also see strong growth in infrastructure projects, including ports, roads
and industrial plants.

Our lawyers also have significant experience in the application of the African business laws under OHADA and within the UEMOA and the interface issues between these regimes and local law. Our team has been, or is currently, involved in all of the most recent projects in UEMOA and OHADA member states.

Also, it must be noted that our network of correspondent lawyers across Africa is solid and reliable. We maintain a solid network of local counsel in every African country and we can confirm that all members of our core team have experience of liaising with and managing local counsel.

Why has Africa been a particularly strong focus for you?

I have been working on sub-Saharan Africa since 1995, at a time where working for Africa was not developed and “fashionable”. Thanks to my Lebanese origins, I have developed a lot of connections with Lebanese family businesses in Africa.

Adding to this, Africa continues to be one of the most desirable regions for project development and investment in key sectors that mirror those of the firm’s legal practice.

What changes have you seen in the appetite for Africa-based ventures and investments over the last five years?

We have noticed a clear shift in the sectors for the investment over the last years from infrastructure and natural resources to sectors like retail, education, healthcare, offshoring and financial services. Also, a number of private investment funds are getting increasingly interested by African projects.

Are there any aspects of the African legal market that you would like to see change?

Except for natural resources, African groups will remain family owned and are managed accordingly. The arrival of foreign investment may assist in increasing management efficiency and needs for sophisticated legal services as a consequence of their development outside their national borders.

Apart from a limited number of countries (Morocco, Mauritius, South Africa), civil servants lack expertise in connection with sophisticated experience and do not enough play the role of business facilitation they should, and African judicial systems have room for improvement.

What megatrends do you think will shape the African market over the coming five years? How (if at all) will these trends affect your practice?

These trends will include the emergence and consolidation of pan-African groups and increasingly active South to South relationships (such as that of Morocco and South Africa). African countries are also producing technological shortcuts, bypassing existing technologies used by “developed” countries. Another trend is the development of start-ups and local networks to fund them.

As far as law firms are concerned, a key business trend that we have noted over the 12 months is that as a result of on-going challenges within all key industry sectors, clients are increasingly becoming more cautious about which lawyers they appoint. Thus, fewer law firms are being successfully appointed to advise on projects and a very small pool of senior and experienced lawyers are being sought to help get deals done and deliver successful project outcomes.

Our strong market reputation as specialists on Africa related projects and our long term experience advising a wide variety of clients from multilaterals and lenders to sponsors, developers, institutional investors and operators means that we have been a significant beneficiary of this trend.