Francisco José Pinheiro Guimarães > Pinheiro Guimarães > Sao Paulo, Brazil > Lawyer Profile

Pinheiro Guimarães is a top choice for high-profile domestic and cross-border financings. The firm acts for a broad range of leading private and institutional creditors, including banks, governments and development agencies, as well as corporate borrowers. This includes regular involvement on some of the largest structured, project and acquisition financings on the market. Lead partners Francisco José Pinheiro Guimarães and Plinio Pinheiro Guimarães N respectively lead the team from the firm’s offices in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Other key partners include Ivie Moura Alves for structured syndicated loans and debt capital markets and Fábio Yanitchkis Couto for distressed debt situations. Roberta Pimentel is particularly active in infrastructure, energy and natural resources-related financings.

Pinheiro Guimarães is well known for high-end transactional work. The firm’s strong market reputation extends to debt and equity capital markets, where it regularly represents listed companies, financial institutions and investment funds on their largest listings. This includes issuer and underwriter support on major cross-border IPOs, secondary offerings, private placements and real estate and agribusiness certificates. Highly respected partners Plinio Pinheiro Guimarães N and Francisco José Pinheiro Guimarães lead the team from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, respectively. Ivie Moura Alves provides a ‘multidisciplinary ability in ECM and DCM operations‘, while Cristina Tomiyama is noted for her ‘technical ability, and mapping and coordination of details‘. The firm’s deep bench of younger partners includes Mariana Silveira Martins Jost, who brings ‘technical vision and differentiated depth‘.

Singled out for its ‘exceptional technical quality and negotiation skills‘, Pinheiro Guimarães has considerable experience in sophisticated M&A transactions involving clients of all sizes, from publicly traded companies to start-ups. Drawing on the firm’s banking and finance tradition, the group is well positioned to handle high-end deals in the financial services sector; private equity investments, and M&A involving listed companies, which generally have additional regulatory challenges, are other notable areas of strength for the team. Its busy workload not only features domestic and cross-border M&A, but also public offerings, joint ventures, spin-offs and corporate reorganisations across a range of industries. Plinio Pinheiro Guimarães steers the Rio de Janeiro-based team on complex M&A deals, and Francisco José Pinheiro Guimarães oversees M&A, private equity and corporate law matters handled by the São Paulo office. Fellow co-head Marcelo Lamy Rego is noted for his ‘in-depth knowledge of corporate law, Brazilian legislation and comprehensive view of all kinds of legal challenges‘. Rodrigo Marcilio is trusted by private equity funds and large corporations in both sell and buy-side transactions. Large-cap M&A and distressed deals are key areas of activity for Sérgio Ramos Yoshino. Maria Amélia Lisbão Senra is noted for her transactional track record in the financial, healthcare and retail sectors.  Also recommended, René Mostardeiro Brunet is a key contact for cross-border M&A and private equity deals, and Carolina Cardoso Ramalho brings together experience in corporate finance and business transactions. The firm has made significant investments in technology, including the implementation of AI tools to facilitate research, legal precedent analysis and due diligence exercises in the context of transactions.