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Mattos Engelberg doubles Brasília office with merger
Brazil’s Mattos Engelberg Advogados, the firm formed after the three-way split of Mattos Muriel Kestener at the beginning of last year, has continued its aggressive growth strategy with the incorporation of criminal, disputes, real estate and administrative firm Lavinas Marinho Buzanelli Donati Advogados and the hire of a new partner to lead its real estate practice.
Mattos Engelberg agreed the merger with Lavinas Marinho Buzanelli Donati last week and hired real estate partner Wagner Garcia Botelha from rival firm Braga Nascimento e Zilio Advogados on 16 March. The new additions increase the firm’s partnership by five to 21 and total headcount by a dozen to more than 90.
The four new partners from Lavinas Marinho are José Lavinas, 34, who joins the public law and infrastructure practice led by André de Sá Braga in Brasília; Gustavo Penna Marinho, 38, who joins the civil litigation and contracts practice overseen by Ezequiel Camargoin São Paulo and João Serra in Brasília; and Paulo Victor Buzanelli, 35, and Conrado Donati Antunes, 32, who will jointly head the firm’s white-collar crime department.
All four partners and their team of associates are based in Mattos Engelberg’s office in Brasília, which has more than doubled in size. Besides offices in Brazil’s political and commercial capitals, the firm also has a presence in Ribeirão Preto in the state of São Paulo, Rio Brilhante in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and in China through a representative office in Shanghai.
“We are always looking for opportunities because we are a firm that is still growing and we are expanding our practice all over Brazil,” explains founding partner Ubiratan Mattos. “We decided to take the opportunity to make our public law practice stronger because Brasília is a strategic market for us because it doesn’t only have Brazil’s higher courts, but it has also has its regulatory agencies.”
Botelha, 44, heads Mattos Engelberg’s real estate practice in São Paulo, where he is also tasked with helping to develop the firm’s agribusiness offering and assisting clients on contracts, infrastructure and corporate law matters. He is admitted to practise in Brazil, but also leverages close to two decades’ experience working at national and foreign law firms including G Breuer in Argentina and Bureau Francis Lefebvre in France. Braga Nascimento e Zilio Advogados, his most recent firm, did not respond to a request for comment.
Botelha’s experience advising domestic and foreign clients in the agribusiness sector is also helping the firm expand and develop its agribusiness offering, ahead of the anticipated lifting of a ban on foreign companies owning agricultural land. “Real estate is one of the areas we already had, but now we are much stronger and better qualified to take care of complex transactions,” says founding partner Fernando Engelberg. “He has 20 years’ experience working in big law firms in Brazil and abroad, much of it where he has just focused on real estate and agribusiness, so this experience is quite unique in the field and allows us to have a different approach.”
Mattos Engelberg has expanded rapidly since it was formed by the division of Mattos Muriel Kestener a little over a year ago. In April last year, the firm poached civil litigation co-head Camargo from a now-defunct litigation boutique, a month after addingcorporate partners André de Godoy Fernandes and Cristiane Borges da Costa from Barretto Ferreira e Brancher, which has now also ceased to exist after being absorbed by Azevedo Sette Advogados.
Source: http://latinlawyer.com/article/1139072/mattos-engelberg-doubles-bras%C3%ADlia-office-with-merger
