Business & Competition

• Compliance Coordinated: BLACK & WHITE LAW FIRM’s Business Litigation & Practice Group attorneys represent businesses in every facet of organization and through all types of litigation.

Litigation

We represent clients before State and Federal courts and administrative agencies in matters involving:

• Contracts
• Restrictive Covenants
• Estate and Property Consultancy
• Securities Exchange Commission Enforcement Actions
• Corporate Affairs Commission Registration and Compliance
• Business Tort Litigation

Furthermore, our lawyers enforce and defend businesses in breach of contract actions, trademark and copyright infringement, negotiations, arbitrations, company due diligence and commercial disparagement disputes.

Corporate Transactional

The Business Litigation & Practice Group offers services requisite to the formation, maintenance and dissolution of any business enterprise. We provide day-to-day counsel on matters involving:

• Corporate Governance
• Director’s Liability
• Regulatory Compliance
• Structure and Transactions
• Liquidations
• Recapitalizations
• Spin-Offs

Directors & Officers Liability

Directors and officers are quickly joining the ranks of the professional and business owners as targets for liability suits. By taking on the highly visible position of director or officer, you assume great personal risk. You could be held liable for any number of things from abuse of authority and libel to slander and financial mismanagement brought against you by shareholders, creditors, customers or employees – to name a few. BLACK & WHITE LAW FIRM has had successes in defending directors and officers in these types of matters.

How we can help

• Trademark, copyright and patent portfolio management: Trademark, copyright and patent filing/prosecution and advice. We can tell you whether your property can be protected and what you have to do to protect it.
• Enforcement of IP rights: Anti-piracy initiatives and enforcement of IP rights against competitors. We work with government agencies to enforce your rights, take legal action against pirates and help you lobby for stronger protection. We can help you maintain your market position by taking swift and effective action against competitors who seek to erode product or service effectiveness and innovation.

Environmental Law

Compliant and Competitive

Widespread adoption of laws and agreements regulating the impact of activities on the environment – from chemicals use to climate change – means greater potential liability for business. You are expected to comply with the rules wherever you operate, yet need to make local activities reflect global strategies that incorporate principles of corporate social responsibility and sustainability. Meanwhile, new rules and the use of market mechanisms to regulate environmental impacts also mean new business opportunities.

At Black & White Law Firm, we can help you not only comply with regulations but also to enhance your competitiveness and pursue environmental and carbon investment opportunities.

How we can help

• Environmental advisory: We advise on environmental health and safety requirements and have experience handling cases of contamination. We advise on the implementation of government programs and assist clients in
• Formulating environmental management systems and policies. We also assist companies manage issues of corporate social responsibility and sustainability.

Company Structuring – Pre-incorporation services, advising and preparation of memorandum and articles of association to capture the scope of clients’ businesses.

• Company Secretarial Services – Sitting in on board meetings, Shareholders’ meetings, rendering legal advice and opinion, and statutory corporate filings with relevant regulatory authorities.
• Solicitors Work – Negotiations, contract drafting and vetting, legal advice and attending business transaction meetings.
• Litigation – Corporate law suits; breach of contract, recovery of debt, defense in actions by individuals, corporate entities on regulatory authorities.
• Alternative Dispute Resolution – Provision of services in ADR including: Negotiation, Mediation, Arbitration, Med-Arb and Mini-Trial for effective and efficient business dispute resolution, which help secure business relationships.
• Due Diligence and Perfection of Transactions – Conducting searches on property, due diligence on companies and intangible assets; seeking statutory approvals and perfections of transactions.

Banking & Finance

Global Knowledge, Local Execution

In today’s global markets, few financial transactions are routine. They involve risk, reward and many unknowns. To complete them successfully, you have to address a range of complex issues all at the same time – especially in multi-jurisdictional activities. It pays to have locally knowledgeable, globally sophisticated legal advisers on your side.

At BLACK & WHITE LAW FIRM, we can help you navigate the maze of banking and finance issues, from term sheet to closing, and if necessary, we can help you enforce remedies and complete restructurings.

Our practice includes lawyers experienced in local and international banking and finance laws, regulations and customs. They possess the global perspective and local experience to complete even the most complex transactions for corporate borrowers, commercial and investment banks, funds, financial institutions and governments.

How We Can Help

• Acquisition Finance: Structuring the financing of cross-border mergers, acquisitions (assets and equity), leveraged buyouts, restructurings and more.
• Asset Finance: Helping purchasers, lenders, lessors, lessees, finance aircraft, rolling stock and other big-ticket leasing and financing transactions.
• Project Finance: Structuring privatizations, limited recourse and non-recourse finance transactions.
• Securitization and Structured Finance: Advising funds, sponsors, credit enhancers and investors in securitization of a variety of asset classes across multiple jurisdictions.
• Derivatives and Financial Products: Negotiating and documenting derivatives-driven structured financings, secured and guaranteed transactions and taxable and tax-exempt products.
• Loans and Credit Facilities: Structuring facilities, secured and unsecured and trade-financing transactions.

Bankruptcy/Financing Restructuring

Time Matters

When it comes to a financial crisis and default, you need to act quickly and decisively to preserve value, buy time, achieve stability, seek relief and avoid the effects of insolvency. With bankruptcy looming, you must protect your interests and salvage as much as you can, and where the operating and financial issues cross international borders, the challenge is to develop and execute a coordinated, effective strategy under pressure.

At BLACK & WHITE LAW FIRM, we understand that in every financial crisis there are windows of opportunity, moments when businesses still can be rescued, rehabilitated or re-organized and when it is possible to stop the erosion of value, and we have the necessary range of legal and business skills — and experience in putting them to work quickly and in a coordinated manner — to help you seize these opportunities.

• Global Migration: We help manage immigration matters, chiefly related to visas and work permits that concern foreign employees.
• Terminations and Layoffs: We provide counsel on separation agreements, as well as the legal/regulatory notice requirements associated with reductions in force and plant closings.
• Employment-related Litigation: We defend or prosecute claims of wrongful discharge, discrimination, harassment, whistleblower actions and protection of intellectual property.
• Pensions Law: We provide practical counselling to sponsoring employers, trustees, and plan administrators involved in running occupational pension plans on all aspects of legislative, regulatory and fiscal requirements.
• Restrictive Covenants/Trade Secrets: We help draft non-competition agreements and nondisclosure agreements, train employees, form policies concerning confidentiality and conduct audits on trade secret protection issues.

Intellectual Property

Protecting Assets

Patents, trademarks and copyrights are the foundation of many major businesses – and critical assets in many more. How you define and protect your innovation and creativity are strategic bottom-line issues. But in a world where piracy and counterfeiting are rampant and the temptation to violate IP rights is strong, you can never rest easy. The changes that made global markets possible and profitable also have made theft of intellectual asset lucrative and pervasive. The need to use IP rights innovatively to maintain a competing edge has never been more pressing. Respond vigorously and globally.

At Black & White Law Firm, we understand the issues and provide unique and global solutions. Our intellectual property practice includes lawyers who can help you identify, manage and protect your IP assets – or acquire those that provide a greater return. We can help you keep up with changing laws and requirements – or work to improve them.

How We Can Help

• Strategic Litigation Analysis: Legal opinions on potential liabilities, dispute audits and pre-litigation planning — all designed to help you manage risk on a general or specific basis.
• Litigation Services: From breach of contracts to product liability, fraud and asset tracing, we guide you through all aspects of litigation/arbitral processes — court/tribunal appearances, selection and management of experts, development and execution of strategy and conduct of hearings and settlement negotiations.
• Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR): Our attorneys are at the forefront of pioneering ADR techniques and, together with accredited mediators, offer a strong complement to our litigation services.

Labour, Employment & Employee Benefits

Flexible Compliance

People are essential to your business. When it comes to employing them, however, few things are ever simple. Their legal rights, personal needs and cultural expectations present both opportunities and risks. The laws and regulations governing relationships between employers and employees are complex, confusing and sometimes contradictory. If you don’t know your rights — or respect their — your productivity, profitability and reputation can all suffer. At Black & White Law Firm, we understand that business success requires legally sound, strategically savvy labour and employment policies and practices. Our Labour, Employment & Employee Benefits Practice Group focus is to help employers comply with the law, prevent unwanted issues from arising and continuously adapt to the realities of an intensely competitive global economy.

How We Can Help

Labour Relations and Trade Unions: We help with wage and hour issues, unionizing activities, collective bargaining, and interpretation of work rules, grievances and industrial disputes.

How We Can Help

Risk analysis: We analyze, make recommendations and work on strengthening our clients’ rights in organizations, loan and security interests, and their enforceability, shareholders’ and employment agreements, equipment and property leases, distribution and franchise agreements and other critical relationships.

Creditors’/Debtors’ rights: We identify creditors’ and debtors’ rights and obligations, provide legal opinion letters and reduce the risks from bankruptcy implications of deals our clients are considering.

Workout, Turnaround and Renewal: As “lawyers to the rescue”, we apply our skills to find solutions and achieve settlements. We negotiate and draft terms of engagement, settlement and pursue fast cash collection and other remedies through efficient dispute resolution. We also assist with asset dispositions, mergers and acquisitions.

Distressed Debt: We represent purchasers and sellers of distressed debt. We help with all aspects of financial restructuring from default to conclusion of a reorganization or liquidation, identifying and exploiting our clients’ leverage.

Formal bankruptcy/insolvency: We negotiate arrangements or plans of reorganization with creditors, we maximize returns for clients with strategies to recover assets, combat fraud, break suspect trusts and deliver value wherever possible.

Insurance

Risk or Opportunity
Managing risk has never been more critical. Regulations across the world are becoming more proactive and interventionist. Consolidation among insurers has imposed new competitive pressures. Carriers are driven to distinguish themselves through service, price and other factors, and acquisitions carry their own risks.

Underwriting profit is a major concern, as is security, with companies seeking to limit their exposure from under-performing assets or partners. Companies now must manage a complex patch work of Coverage from a variety of different carriers, and the decisions on the level and kind of risks to be retained are becoming increasingly difficult.

At BLACK & WHITE LAW FIRM, insurance lawyers provide comprehensive legal services in the insurance and re-insurance arena. We apply local industry and commercial knowledge sensitive to issues. We devise risk management strategies to reduce exposure. We advise on navigating complex regulatory frameworks that may have implications for enforcement, and we conduct due diligence in Mergers & Acquisitions situations so companies can better assess the risks they take to their balance sheets.

How We Can Help

• Capital Markets Transactions – Capital raising, mergers, acquisitions and re-organizations, private and public placements of securities and notes.
• Assistance with major Insurance and Reinsurance Disputes – including strategic litigation analysis, audits, commutations and extending to all forms of dispute resolution, including litigation, arbitration and ADR.
• Insurance and Reinsurance Products – new product development and discontinued operation advisory work.
• Design of Finite Risk Reinsurance Products – alternative risk transfer mechanisms, and derivative swaps products for use in reinsurance support structures and solutions.
• Insurance and Reinsurance Insolvencies – reconstruction and cross-border security issues.
• Tax Planning – captive programs, structuring offshore vehicles for catastrophe coverage, funding programs and insurance of discounted reserves.

Financial Crimes

Giving Hope

Fraud is not only a concern of all levels of government, but impacts businesses and companies as well. The Black & White Law Firm Financial Crime Group represents business, companies and individuals in the investigations or the defence of criminal conduct involving.

financial fraud. Our attorneys also evaluate current business practices for changes in policy and reporting procedures, in a pro-active effort to avoid future legal action.

The Financial Crimes Group is led by skilled trial attorneys, with vast experience as State prosecutors; they have the experience necessary to handle a wide variety of financial fraud matters including:

• Internal Investigations
• Special Investigations Units
• Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions Investigations
• Independent Corrupt Practices Commission Investigations
• Code of Conduct Bureau Indictments
• SEC Enforcement
• Financial Institutions Fraud
• Consumer Fraud
• Revenue Tax Prosecutions
• Liability for Crimes of Others
• Malicious Prosecutions, False Arrest and Defamation

The Financial Crimes Group is also staffed to defend against a garden variety of criminal charges, whether ordinance, misdemeanour or felony, brought by State or Federal prosecutors.

Dispute Resolution

Taking Charge

Companies today operate in an intensely competitive global market place. Cross-border transactions introduce a host of variables. In this environment, disputes are inevitable. Navigating them successfully requires a combination of global experience and local knowledge.

At Black & White Law Firm, Dispute Resolution lawyers assess your legal risks and liabilities and identify problems before they emerge. When disputes happen, we help you devise and implement the right strategy. Where litigation is required, our lawyers have the experience and know-how to take complex cross-border issues to court, fighting aggressively and incisively on your behalf, and where arbitration,

YOU CAN GET ADVICE IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS OF LAW THROUGH THIS OFFICE:

Here is the complete transcription of the areas of law listed in the document, organized by category:

Personal Service

• Civil Litigation
• Clinical Negligence
• Contentious Probate
• Conveyancing
• Crime
• Defamation/Libel
• Education Law
• Employment
• Family and Matrimonial
• Financial Services
• Foreign Property
• Housing
• Immigration
• Insolvency/Bankruptcy
• Judicial Reviews
• Mental Health
• Pensions and Pensions Law
• Personal Injury
• Professional Negligence
• Property Litigation
• Sports Law
• Wills, Trusts and Tax Planning

Business Services

• Agriculture
• Banking
• Business Crime
• Charity Law
• Commercial Contracts and Agreements
• Commercial Fishery Law
• Commercial Litigation
• Commercial Property
• Construction
• Corporate
• Corporate Finance
• Corporate Tax
• Debt Recovery
• Employment
• Entertainment, Music and Media
• Environmental
• Equine Law
• Financial Services
• Insolvency
• Intellectual Property
• International Law
• IT/E-Commerce
• Licensing and Gaming
• Maritime/Shipping Law
• Mineral/Mines
• Regulatory (Health and Safety)
• Transport/Road Haulage