Corporate

Corporate

Our corporate law team, in close collaboration with lawyers from other practice groups, provides a full range of services to help clients tackle the legal challenges of doing business locally.

Offering practical guidance, innovative solutions, and a broad perspective, we counsel our clients throughout all stages of the business life cycle. Our work philosophy is simple: to establish long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with clients by providing efficient and cost-effective legal services.

Our lawyers have extensive experience working with start-ups and also well-established, multinational companies. We have advised clients in a variety of sectors and industries, including banking, finance, e-commerce, construction, real estate, energy, IT and telecom, and fast-moving consumer goods.

The following services are offered by our corporate law team:

Business Organization & Structuring

We assist clients with entity decisions and determining minimum capital requirements and ownership structures. We help with the formation of private and public limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships, general partnerships, and joint ventures, as well as with the establishment of local branches/liaison offices of foreign companies. We offer both standard and bespoke solutions for incorporation documents. We also provide advice and assistance to foreign clients regarding the mandatory requirements of local foreign exchange laws. This ensures the hassle-free repatriation of profits, dividends, and disinvestment proceeds from investments in Pakistan.

Corporate Governance Advice

We regularly advise senior management and internal legal and compliance departments of listed and unlisted companies on best practices for corporate governance matters. We have assisted many clients with developing and implementing internal controls to ensure compliance with applicable corporate governance rules and regulations, audit standards, record-keeping and disclosure requirements, and other corporate directives.

Our lawyers routinely serve as outside general counsel for companies and their management teams on the application of best governance practices for appropriate oversight and risk management.

We regularly conduct independent compliance audits on behalf of our clients. We also run independent internal investigations for clients to ascertain the truthfulness and authenticity of allegations concerning breaches of internal controls and procedures, criminal and civil liability, corruption, money laundering, and other white-collar crimes. We advise clients on these matters in light of applicable local laws.

Corporate Compliance

We have developed a robust, technology-assisted tracking and reminder system to support clients and help them make timely corporate filings, avoid unnecessary complications, and ensure smooth business operations. We also guide and assist clients with record-keeping requirements under local company law, including the drafting of minutes and resolutions and the filing of statutory returns with corporate regulators.

Executive Employment & Severance

We specialize in executive employment and severance agreements and offer bespoke solutions for clients. Our lawyers have extensive experience structuring severance agreements to achieve maximum protection by incorporating restrictive covenants (noncompete, nonsolicitation, and nondisclosure) to the extent permitted by local law. We also provide assistance when enforcing such covenants.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Our corporate law team has excellent transactional skills and has assisted a large number of clients with structuring mergers, reorganizations, takeovers, and acquisition transactions in compliance with local corporate laws. Our lawyers routinely represent clients in high courts in approval proceedings for  mergers, reorganizations, and similar transactions.

We advise and assist acquirers and/or target companies with transactions involving acquisitions of substantial shares or takeovers of listed companies in order to ensure full compliance with local securities law. We also represent clients before corporate regulators and local courts, with assistance and support from our litigation team.

We work with clients to obtain the required consents and approvals for acquisitions of substantial equity stakes in companies operating in sectors regulated by special laws.

The scope of our M&A transaction services extends to three areas:

• Performing due diligence on target companies through physical and virtual data rooms. Preparing detailed due diligence reports for clients, highlighting any potential risks and providing legal solutions and strategies to mitigate such risks.
• Advising on the structures of transactions in light of commercial agreements between parties and applicable local laws.
• Drafting and reviewing transaction documents and advising on implementation in accordance with local laws.