Enrique Gómez-Pinzón is a member of the International and Cross-Border Transactions Group within the Business Law Section. He practices in the areas of cross-border investment and financings, mergers and acquisitions, international arbitration and project finance. In his practice he has participated in some of the most important financing and privatization transactions in Colombia in the last 15 years, including the cellular telephone licenses, and several banking and power generation and distribution companies.
Recently Mr. Gómez-Pinzón has represented purchasers of dairy products companies in a acquisition in Ecuador and sellers of the largest petrochemical company in Colombia. He has also participated in the 2005 largest M&A transaction in Latin America representing minority stockholders on the sale side, as well as in significant acquisitions and M&A transactions in the U.S. representing foreign acquirer companies. He has participated in cross-border transactions in Brazil, The Bahamas, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Peru, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. He is part of the roster of arbitrators of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). He presided over an arbitration between international investors and Argentina. He is also member of an arbitration panel in a matter between an international utility company and Ecuador. He is one of the arbitrators appointed by Colombia under the G-3 Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Venezuela. He coordinated the team that handled one of Colombia's largest litigation matters, which was litigated successfully, before the District Court for the District of Columbia, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and finally the U.S Supreme Court. Mr. Gómez-Pinzón participated as counsel to the sponsors of the Ocensa Pipeline, the largest project-finance infrastructure project built in Colombia. He acted as counsel to the managers of bonds issued by the Republic of Colombia Ecopetrol, FEN and Bancoldex, among others, in the nineties.
He has successfully represented contractors in matters before the Sanctions Committee of the World Bank. Mr. Gómez-Pinzón, the founder and formerly the head of one of the leading law firms in Colombia, was Co-founder and Director of the Colombian-Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Director of the Bogotá Stock Exchange, as well as board member of several public companies and banks in Colombia and the United States.
He has served as the Director of the Colombian Trade Bureau in Washington, D.C., where he represented the Colombian Government and several of its industries in Washington, D.C. In this position, he participated actively in lobbying efforts to expand the Andean Trade Preferences Act and supported the settlement of long-term antidumping litigation against the Colombian cut-flower industry among other activities. He formed part of the Colombian Delegation to the WTO Seattle Ministerial Meeting of 1999 and to the Toronto FTAA Ministerial Meeting of 1999. He has represented in Washington a group of Latin-American commodity producers in connection with trade-related matters. He has advised international companies in obtaining deliverables under the Free Trade Agreement negotiations between the U.S. and Colombia.
Mr. Gómez-Pinzón leads the team of more than 20 Holland & Knight lawyers and represents the Coordinating Committee of Communities affected by the Chixoy Dam, an organization of 23 Maya Achi Communities in Guatemala.