Practice Areas
Our banking law practice includes the rendering of legal advise to our clients in relation with international and local banking transactions.
The scope of our international banking work includes loans, swaps and leasing transactions. Our effort is aimed to provide practical legal advise regarding tax and structural aspects of international banking activities in the Venezuelan market.
With respect to our local banking practice, we advise local branches of our clients in relation to regulatory and general business legal issues in Venezuela.
The banking practice of our firm is mainly concentrated in the legal, tax and regulatory aspects of international financial facilities extended by international financial institutions to companies operating in Venezuela, as well as facilities extended to the Venezuelan public sector. The types of work that we normally perform in this section include the following:
- Preparation, drafting and negotiation of loan agreements, credit agreements and other types of financial facilities.
- Review of loan agreements prepared by outside counsel (mainly New York or English counsel) of a particular international bank, specially when we deal with international syndicated loans.
- Tax aspects of payments made to the lending institution arising out of the loan agreement, including interest payments, commissions and others.
- Analysis and drafting of security agreements, preparation and perfection of security interest on assets and cash flow of the borrower; preparation of different forms of guarantees or cross-guarantees for amounts owed under the loan.
- Review of corporate approvals for loan agreements; in the case of loans to the Venezuelan public sector (Republic of Venezuela or an entity that belongs directly or indirectly in 50% or more to the public sector in Venezuela), this review is quite delicate because of the limitations provided for under the Venezuelan Public Sector Financial Administration Act.
- Packaging of loans, including the creation of negotiable participation certificates and other forms of securitization (see also a description of our Capital Markets practice).
- International financial leases, which are not presently regulated in the Venezuelan Income Tax Law and, therefore, implies special tax considerations.