Hogan Lovells has expanded its Latin America offering by launching a second office in Brazil, hiring former Clifford Chance (CC) partner Isabel Costa Carvalho.
Its new São Paulo office will operate as a foreign legal consultancy, offering services to local and international companies and banks after the Brazilian Bar Association awarded the global law firm a licence to practise in the region in July 2013.
Capital markets partner Costa Carvalho will lead the new team and focus on bolstering the firm’s Latin America-based equity capital markets, corporate and international debt capital markets practices as well as its New York, Washington and London-based capital practice focused on Latin America.
Costa Carvalho spent two decades at CC where she headed its capital markets practice from 2007. She recently handled a $6bn IPO for BB Seguridade – one of the largest floats in Latin America in recent years.
Hogan Lovells launched its Rio de Janeiro office in early 2013.
The Latin American market has been one of the most targeted emerging economic regions for global advisers, despite the recent slowdown in the Brazilian economy and continued wrangling over bar rules in São Paulo.
Hogan Lovells’ Rio office managing partner Claudette Christian said: ‘Adding a São Paulo office to our existing Rio de Janeiro operations brings differentiation and diversification to our Brazil and broader Latin American practice.
‘We continue to see interest in Brazil from existing global clients as well as companies that are entering the market for the first time, and we wanted to be able to offer clients a full breadth of expertise in equity and debt capital markets, private equity, infrastructure development and finance, and corporate transactional work across Brazil.’