Leading local firm Naciri & Associés announced in July 2011 that it would partner up with Allen & Overy, marking A&O's first office on the African continent. Naciri & Associés / Gide Loyrette partners Hicham Naciri and Yassir Ghorbal along with Allen & Overy's former United Arab Emirates partner Francois Duquette will head the team on the ground in Casablanca....
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Leading local firm Naciri & Associés announced in July 2011 that it would partner up with Allen & Overy, marking A&O's first office on the African continent. Naciri & Associés / Gide Loyrette partners Hicham Naciri and Yassir Ghorbal along with Allen & Overy's former United Arab Emirates partner Francois Duquette will head the team on the ground in Casablanca.
Former Gide partner Philippe de Richoufftz will join the firm's Africa team in Paris to work alongside Tim Scales, head of the A&O's Africa desk. By October 2011 the firm expects to have 30 fee earners on the ground. Allen & Overy has been actively involved in Moroccan deals from its Paris office for a number of years, using firms such as Naciri & Associés as local counsel.
In recent deals, the firms advised ABN Amro as arranger on a $350 million bridge facility to Meditelecom, the second mobile phone operator in Morocco, to finance and develop its activities and advised Shell on the divestment of its majority stake in its downstream business in Morocco. The pan-African divestment totalled $1 billion.
In the power sector, the firms advised General Electric, Theolia and TAQA on their bid for the DBFM (develop-build-finance-maintain) concession of a 300MW wind farm and TAQA and Jorf Lasfar Energy Company in connection with the development and financing of the 700MW Jorf Lasfar power project.
Other work saw the firm advise Transcom Worldwide on the €1.2 billion sale of its 60% stake in its Moroccan operations, a consortium led by the Office National de l'Electricité on water, electricity and sanitation services at the Port of Tangiers and Bunge on a joint-venture with the State of Morocco for a phosphate plant.
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