Latin America & Caribbean

Winston’s industry-leading Antitrust/Competition attorneys provide comprehensive legal services to clients based in Latin America or operating in the region. For companies and individual executives based in Latin America, we offer U.S.-, EU-, and China-qualified practitioners with decades of experience handling compliance, investigation, government enforcement, civil litigation, and merger review matters in jurisdictions around the world. We recognize that expanding into new markets, with an often-confusing patchwork of laws and regulations, can be daunting, so we strive to provide Latin America-based clients with a “one-stop shop” solution to their global competition-related legal needs. For international clients operating in Latin America, we offer deep experience with government investigations and enforcement actions in virtually every Latin American country with an enforcement regime. Through our trusted network of local counsel, we provide clients with a single solution to legal challenges across a host of Latin American countries. Indeed, our Antitrust/Competition Practice has been representing clients with legal needs in Latin America since the region’s first sustained enforcement push in the early 1990s. In the years since, we’ve assisted clients in the more than 20 Latin American countries with active competition laws, developing particularly strong capabilities with respect to Brazil’s Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE) and Mexico’s Comisón Federal de Competencia Económica (CFC). 

Learn more about our firmwide Antitrust/Competition practice. 

We represent issuers and initial purchasers in bond offerings—particuarly pursuant to Rule 144A/Reg S —to fund projects in the energy, natural resources, infrastructure, real estate, telecommunications, and consumer products sectors throughout Latin America and have deep experience in Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Brazil. We routinely advise major corporations. Our experience includes counseling clients on public and private equity and debt offerings, including IPOs, investment-grade and high-yield debt offerings, American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), Euro-commercial paper programs, PIPEs, REITs, and offerings involving senior and subordinated debt and equity hybrids.

We are also a leader in SPAC transactions in Latin America, as well as in the U.S. and globally. Our team regularly represents SPAC sponsors and underwriters in structuring SPACs and completing their IPOs; SPACs and target companies in SPAC business combination transactions (de-SPACing); and investors considering investments in SPACs. We have a deep understanding of not only the legal issues impacting SPACs, but also the business, marketing, and industry issues that affect the success of SPACs.

Learn more about our firmwide Capital Markets practice. 

Our team bridges the legal divide between the U.S. legal system and the differences from the civil law systems in Latin America. Our international arbitration practice has handled virtually every type of commercial arbitration, involving a variety of industry sectors, including energy and infrastructure. We are also well known for investment arbitration representations and have a wealth of experience acting for a diverse mix of investors and sovereign states. Recognized in the Global Arbitration Review’s “GAR 100” and as a “Top Arbitration Firm” by The American Lawyer, our team brings together the experience of one of the U.S.’s most renowned litigation and arbitration practices and the capabilities of one of the U.S.’s leading Latin American practice groups. The combination offers Latin American clients unsurpassed effectiveness and value in pursuing and protecting their strategic objectives in U.S. dispute resolution and international arbitration.

We maintain offices in many of the world’s most important arbitration centers, including New York, Miami, Texas, Washington, D.C., California, London, Paris, and Hong Kong, and handle arbitrations seated across the globe under all the major international arbitration rules, including the ICC, ICDR/AAA, LCIA, ICSID, SCC, CIETAC, HKIAC, DIAC, SIAC, CAS-TAS, Swiss Chambers, and UNCITRAL rules. Our practitioners are qualified in multiple jurisdictions and tackle disputes arising under civil law, common law, and international law. Further, we arbitrate in numerous different languages, including Spanish, English, and Portuguese.

Learn more about our firmwide International Arbitration practice. 

Winston’s well-established Latin America corporate and M&A practice advises global clients (including clients in Latin America) on a diverse range of corporate mandates, including complex company formations, cross-border transactions throughout the region, strategic acquisitions and dispositions, multifaceted spin-offs, and joint ventures. We have substantial experience with notable infrastructure, energy, and natural resources transactions.

We have a broad and active private equity practice. We provide strategic advice and legal counsel to private equity funds, hedge funds, family offices, portfolio companies, and institutional investors with U.S. and Latin America investments. Our team delivers value throughout each phase of the investment life cycle—from fund formation, deal sourcing, platform transactions, acquisition financing, and tax structuring, to add-on acquisitions, portfolio company management, and exits.

Learn more about our firmwide M&A and Private Equity practices.

Our comprehensive Latin America-focused Project Finance Practice combines the experience and resources necessary to successfully guide our clients through a broad and dynamic array of projects worldwide. We regularly advise private lenders, tax equity investors, project sponsors and developers, host governments, offtakers, and other project counterparties, as well as participants, in investments and non-recourse/limited recourse financings. Our experience in this space covers a wide range of project types, including conventional power, renewable and alternative energy, nuclear, oil and gas, LNG, petrochemicals, water and wastewater, infrastructure, transportation, telecommunications, social and commercial buildings, sports and stadia, and mining and natural resources projects. We provide counsel in connection with public-private partnerships (PPPs or P3s) as well as project bonds. We also have extensive experience with single project and project portfolio acquisitions and dispositions.

Learn more about our firmwide Project Finance practice.

Winston’s Latin America-focused structured finance attorneys are recognized leaders in a wide range of key asset classes, including aircraft, vessel, and railcar finance; marketplace lending; CLOs; energy structured finance (including solar finance and reserve-based finance); commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS); derivatives and structured products; lease and operating asset finances; and life settlements. We frequently develop and rethink the structures and documents that the market employs in aggregating and funding these and other emerging and mature asset types. Our Tax team is known for its command of securitization and structured fund tax issues, and its capacity to identify (and explain in layman’s terms) nuanced and pragmatic solutions to challenging problems.

Learn more about our firmwide Structured Finance practice.

We offer Latin American clients an industry-leading Investigations, White Collar & Government Investigations Practice frequently recognized as top tier by Best Lawyers, among other leading publications. With more than 100 lawyers with significant experience in internal investigations, regulatory compliance, anti-bribery and anti-corruption (ABAC) laws, and sanctions enforcement, Winston provides a wealth of experience to governments, public and private companies, and individual executives on relevant matters in Latin America. Winston is recognized by The Legal 500 Latin America as having a team with in-depth local experience and access to international knowledge relating to compliance programs, internal investigations, and government enforcement activity—both in the U.S. and outside the U.S.

Our clients benefit from our attorneys who are native to the languages and who know the markets intimately. With these combined strengths, we can get clients through their most challenging matters regardless of the country, scope, or situation. Our team includes former prosecutors, government enforcement agents, military lawyers, and in-house compliance professionals who work closely to provide our clients in Latin America with a full-service solution to regulatory challenges and enforcement risks. Notably, our white collar attorneys regularly help clients navigate U.S. and international ABAC and AML laws, including the FCPA and the UK Bribery Act, that pose extensive risks to global enterprises. With regulators ratcheting up ABAC investigations in major Latin American markets, including Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Ecuador, it is important that Latin American companies and global corporations with Latin American interests have experienced white collar counsel by their side.

Learn more about our firmwide White Collar & Government Investigations practice.