About

Vincent Mohy is responsible for setting up the legal function of SOCAR Trading, the marketing arm of the state oil company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) which as of the end of January 2018, is composed of a group of approximately 30 companies. Mohy provides day-to-day counselling and support to top management, reporting to the CEO, managing the legal team of five members and the demurrage team of three members for SOCAR Trading Group. Mohy has expanded the legal department of SOCAR Trading, investing a great deal of importance in the growth and development of the function’s role within the business. When discussing his approach he says: ‘What I have always tried to achieve is a balance between a good in-house legal team and an efficient use of outside counsel resources. We are in a business where the management of costs is fundamental, but also one with high risks and in a fast-moving regulatory environment. Therefore, effective cost management cannot be done at the expense of quality requirements’. With the aim of expanding the company’s remit, he participated in the set-up of additional trading offices of SOCAR Trading in London and Houston. With offices in Geneva, Dubai and Singapore already established, ‘this has made the company a truly global one operating non-stop and subject to the challenges in very different legal cultures and regulatory environments’, adds Mohy. Amongst his large scale deals, he has worked on the acquisition of a fleet of ten vessels by SOCAR Trading through one of its subsidiaries and of four other vessels through a sister company, in what he describes as ‘the most resource intensive transaction’, combining share deals, assets and multiple sources of financing. He was also involved in the sale of the SOCAR Aurora Fujairah Terminal FZC, in which SOCAR Trading had 50% participation. This was particularly relevant as it was the final point of a full business cycle from a Greenfield project, to construction financing in different stages including project financing for the second phase, operation and finally exit through this sale. Mohy was additionally involved in the successful defence of an over US$100m arbitration in Egypt before the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration, managing a litigation team of ten lawyers across three different firms and four jurisdictions. Listed as a highlight of his career he says ‘it moulded my vision of legal risk in a simple way, the big impacts rarely arise as a result of a defective assessment of a risk, most often they will come from a risk that one forgot about’.