Sovereigns

About

Sovereign advisory work is in the Firm's DNA. For more than 100 years, White & Case has helped sovereign clients and their counterparts resolve their most complex business and legal challenges across a range of activities, including:

  • Debt management and restructuring
  • Funding
  • International arbitration and litigation
  • International trade
  • Energy, infrastructure and project finance
  • Energy transition and ESG
  • Privatization and legal reform
  • Public-private partnerships
  • Sovereign wealth funds

 

View all lawyers in Sovereigns

Experience

Banking and capital markets
We have a particularly strong track record for sovereign bond issues in emerging markets in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. For example, we have recently advised on the debut sovereign bond issues for the Czech Republic, Italy, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Lithuania, Montenegro, Nigeria, Qatar, the Republic of Albania, the Republic of Belarus, Senegal and the Slovak Republic.

Debt restructuring and liability management
We represented Samruk-Kazyna National Welfare Fund JSC, the national property fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in connection with Kazakhstan's state-sponsored stabilization and recapitalization of the four largest Kazakh banks: BTA Bank JSC, Kazkommertsbank JSC, Alliance Bank JSC and Halyk Savings Bank JSC.

International arbitration and litigation
Our work on more than 100 investor-state arbitrations regularly makes headlines for the landmark results we achieve. Our group has been recognized repeatedly as the leader in this specialized area with decades of experience and winning results for our clients. We have worked successfully with dozens of State clients and know how to navigate the political sensitivity that sometimes accompanies such disputes. In two independent studies published by Credibility International in 2014 and in 2021, White & Case was recognized as the most successful firm in ICSID arbitration.

International trade
We represented the governments of Argentina and Mexico in their WTO challenge of several aspects of US laws and regulations relating to sunset reviews in anti-dumping proceedings (both in general and as applied to oil country tubular goods from Argentina and Mexico). The case was successfully concluded when the US revoked the anti-dumping orders on these products.

Energy, infrastructure and project finance
We have a long track record of helping governments maximize their returns from infrastructure and other development projects. Recent examples include representing the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority in its seventh and eighth independent water and power producer projects at the Shuweihat S2 and Qidfa sites.

Privatization and legal reform
We have completed over 100 privatization transactions around the world, helping to establish many of the fundamental principles of privatizations through drafting legislation, establishing regulatory frameworks and restructuring state-owned enterprises and industries. Examples include Poland's mass privatization program and the liberalization of the Kingdom of Bahrain's telecommunications industry.

Public-private partnerships (PPP)
We have successfully assisted many sovereigns around the world with PPP. For example, we represented the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in connection with a 25-year concession granted to a private sector contractor to expand, refurbish and operate the Queen Alia International Airport in Amman. This was the first limited recourse airport financing in the region and is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the region to have been concluded on a PPP basis.

Sovereign wealth funds
We have significant experience representing sovereign wealth funds around the world on strategic and opportunistic investments, investment vehicles, restructuring issues, M&A transactions, project financings, tax structuring, compliance, disputes and legislative change. For example, we represented Qatar Investment Authority in connection with the investment by its principal holding company of more than US$6 billion in ordinary shares, mandatory convertible securities and perpetual tier 1 capital notes of Credit Suisse Group AG.