Global Emerging Markets
Corporate, Project Finance and
Securities Transactions Practice
Direct: +1 (212) 752-2994
Main Tel.: +1 (212) 938-0600
Fax: +1 (212) 938-0601
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Robert Y. Stebbings
Senior Counsel
Robert Y. Stebbings concentrates his practice in the international corporate and financial areas, particularly in relation to Latin America and other emerging markets. Mr. Stebbings has extensive experience counseling on international transactions, including project finance, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, corporate and trade finance, and intellectual property. He is also experienced in advising in-bound investors.
Mr. Stebbings has advised clients throughout Latin America, as well as elsewhere, including in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela. He was lead counsel for the US$ one billion plus Samarco Project in Brazil, which included the development of iron mining facilities, the world’s largest slurry pipeline, ore concentration and pellet plants and a new port facility. His recent work includes the representation of an Argentinean issuer for a residential mortgage securitization fund; the representation of Petrobras, the Brazilian state oil company, in its New York Stock Exchange IPO; the representation of the municipality of La Paz, Bolivia in connection with a municipal finance offering; and the representation of a leading United States bank in transactions throughout Latin America, including structuring a major export finance mechanism in Colombia and a Guatemalan Central Bank restructuring.
Mr. Stebbings is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and French, in addition to his native English.
Mr. Stebbings is a Director of the Brazilian American Chamber of Commerce; Director and past President of the Venezuelan American Association of the United States; former Director of the Argentine American Chamber of Commerce; Director and Vice President of the American Foreign Law Association; and General Counsel, Secretary and Board Member of the Business Council for International Understanding, among other professional memberships.
Prior to joining Schwartz Law Firm LLC as senior counsel, Mr. Stebbings was in private practice with his own firm. Mr. Stebbings was previously a partner and chairman of the Latin American Practice Group at Rogers & Wells and a partner in the law firm of Kaye Scholer LLP. He was an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell, served as legal counsel for several years in Buenos Aires at the Institute for Latin American Integration (INTAL) and was International Counsel for Marcona Corporation and Utah International Inc. (Marcona was acquired by Utah) in San Francisco. While in this position, Mr. Stebbings was the lead counsel in negotiating a favorable settlement following the Peruvian government’s (Velasco) expropriation of Marcona Corporation’s Peruvian operation.
An alumnus of Columbia University’s graduate schools, Mr. Stebbings received his J.D. in 1967 and his M.B.A. in 1968 and studied law at the University of Paris. He received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1963. Some of Mr. Stebbings’ many books and articles include an article on securitization in the March 1997 Dirigencia and an article on arbitration in Brazil in the January/February 1997 issue of LatinLaw magazine. He is a member of the American Bar Association and is admitted to practice in New York and California. Mr. Stebbings is also of counsel to Grant, Herrmann, Schwartz & Klinger LLP.
PUBLICATIONS: • An author of the 500 page Study “Asociación Internacional de Empresas en América Latina: Aspectos Jurídicos” (legal aspects of international joint ventures in Latin America) published by the Instituto para la Integración de America Latina (INTAL) and the Inter-American Development Bank (Buenos Aires, 1974).
· “Panamá y la Empresa Multinacional: Su Papel de Paraíso Fiscal y Otras Consideraciones” (discussion of Panama’s tax haven and other attractions for the multinational corporation) in Derecho de la Integración, the Instituto para la Integración de America Latina (INTAL), No. 15 (March 1974, Buenos Aires).
· “Panama and the Multinational Corporation: Tax Haven and Other Considerations,” 3 The International Lawyer 626, the American Bar Association (1974).
· Pueblo y Justicia: Ayuda Jurídica Gratuita en la Argentina, Ediciones Depalma, Buenos Aires, Argentina 1975. Book dealing with the rights of the Argentine poor to legal assistance.
· “The Argentine Foreign Investment Law and its Andean Common Market Inspiration,” 2 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 277 (1975). A 113-page article analyzing the legal aspects of foreign investment and technology transfer in Argentina with comparative consideration of practices in the Andean Common Market and in other emerging markets.
· “La Ley Argentina sobre Inversiones Extranjeras y su Inspiración en el Mercado Común Andino,” Nos. 18 and 19, Derecho de la Integración, March and July 1975, Instituto para la Integracion de America Latina (INTAL), Buenos Aires, Argentina (Spanish version of above).
· Co-Author (with William B. Meissner, Esq., Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) of Brazilian Exports: Policies. Structure and Procedures, published by the American Bar Association (1982) as one of eleven book-length studies dealing with the export policies and programs of the major trading countries of the Western World.
