Norwegian Big Four firm Wikborg Rein has tied up with one of Brazil’s leading law firms Viera, Rezende, Barbosa e Guerreiro Advogados (VRBG) in an exclusive best-friends alliance – a move indicative of growing cooperation between Norway, China and Latin America in the maritime and the oil & gas sector.
"The [deep water] technology is in Norway, the money in China and the opportunities in Brazil,” Wikborg Rein’s Shanghai managing partner Geir Sviggum said. “This triangle is going to be extremely important in the years to come. Growth in Shanghai has been so explosive, more than half the lawyers we have here now, weren’t here a year ago. Additionally, in the Brazilian market, outside of pure maritime, there are a lot of mining opportunities in the energy and resources sector. Infrastructure in Brazil is underdeveloped; so there have been severe challenges in transportation from the mines to the coast. That opens up infrastructure possibilities for Chinese companies and we think they are going to be investing quite heavily in the years to come.”
The move to partner up with VRBG comes hot on the heels of an inaugural signing ceremony with a Chinese state owned company, listing Wikborg Rein as one of a very few foreign law firms the government-linked company is allowed to work with for the next three years. The panel appointment was inked on 20 May 2011 in Beijing.
According to Sviggum, investment flows in the energy sector are projected to be stronger from China inbound to Brazil although anecdotal evidence from the Brazilian counsel general has shown a number of Brazilian companies looking for opportunities in China as well. “What we are seeing now, are several joint efforts,” Sviggum said.
Wikborg Rein’s Shanghai office was more than 100% ahead of budget last year and is 30% to 40% ahead of budget this year. “We are growing very quickly – it’s hard to quantify how much this alliance will add to our short term growth but we believe that we will have a stronger offering with this cooperation and we expect the increase to be significant,’ he said.
The firms plan to develop strong ties through a large amount of face-to-face interaction. Wikborg Rein plans for its Norwegian lawyers to be permanently based in the field at all times, and will have at least one lawyer in VRBG’s Brazilian office. Brazilian lawyers from VRGB will also be based in Shanghai on secondments – with further plans to send them to other Wikborg Rein offices in the pipeline.
Semi-public Brazilian energy company Petrobras – the third largest energy company in the world; and the 8th biggest global company in terms of market value (US$164.8bn) of which its biggest stockholder is the government of Brazil – has awarded a number of contracts to clients of the Wikborg Rein-VRBG alliance through a third-party intermediary.
"As far as I am aware of, we have acted on more FPSO- and other complex offshore projects than any other law firm in the world,” Sviggum said in response to its success in capturing this potential pipeline of work. “In Brazil, we are going to see typical offshore work – which we have done in other emerging oil & gas markets - and a surge in co-operations between technology-heavy Western companies and cash-rich outbound, aggressive Chinese companies,” he said.
Wikborg Rein’s current headcount in Shanghai numbers close to 20 lawyers – almost tripled from its headcount in 2008.ALB
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