Professional notice
Acted as co-counsel in several ICSID claims against Peru
| People in Who’s Who Legal | 2 |
|---|---|
| People in Future Leaders | 1 |
| Pending cases as counsel | 9 |
| Value of pending counsel work | US$1.25 billion |
| Treaty cases as counsel | 1 |
| Third-party funded cases | 0 |
Highly regarded for its cross-border transactional work, Miranda & Amado is also one of the few Peruvian firms to have acquired an international arbitration profile. It owes that reputation in large part to partner José Daniel Amado, who cut his teeth at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr working with Gary Born and the late Arthur Marriott.
The firm opened in 1999, at the end of a decade that saw arbitration beginning to develop in Peru. Early successes came in the 2000s when it teamed up with White & Case for a US$100 million construction dispute, and with Freshfields in an important case over delays in the construction of the Camisea gas pipeline. But it really made its mark acting for Duke Energy in the first successful ICSID claim against Peru.
Amado is vice president of the ICC Peru Arbitration Commission, having served as chair of the Peruvian Arbitration Institute previously, and he is a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He has also been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge and a past scholar-in-residence at WilmerHale.
In 2018, the firm merged with Peruvian disputes boutique Priori & Carrillo, adding partners including Giovanni Priori, who is now prominent in Miranda & Amado’s litigation practice alongside Mauricio Raffo.
Another name to know is Cristina Ferraro, who returned to the firm in 2014 after spells with King & Spalding and Curtis Mallet-Prevost Colt & Mosle, and who has worked on a number of investor-state matters.
Who uses it?
The Camisea consortium – made up of Argentina’s Pluspetrol and Tecpetrol, the US’s Hunt Oil, South Korea’s SK Group, Spain’s Repsol and Algeria’s Sonatrach – has used the firm for an ICSID case over Peru’s largest natural gas project. It has provided expert evidence for parties in various other ICSID cases against Peru.
Other clients in the energy sector have included Engie (in a case relating to a major earthquake), Norway’s Interoil, Transportadora de Gas del Perú and subsidiaries of Israel’s IC Power. It has also acted for Siemens, Abengoa, Skanska, Telefónica, Hochschild Mining, Sacyr and General Electric.
The firm defended the government of China in two CIETAC cases concerning ownership of Peru’s largest iron ore mine.
Track record
In 2016, the firm secured a US$10 million award for Quebec-based engineering firm Dessau in an arbitration with the Peruvian regional government of Loreto. The tribunal also rejected Loreto’s US$70 million counterclaim.
Miranda & Amado has also teamed up with King & Spalding to represent Vancouver-based Bear Creek Mining in an investment treaty claim against Peru, winning an award in 2017 worth US$30.4 million for the expropriation of a silver mine concession.
The firm won a favourable settlement for an Abengoa subsidiary after it threatened an ICSID claim against Peru over a demand for US$35 million in penalties.
Recent events
In one of several ICSID claims against Peru the firm is working on, it secured US$8.6 million in damages for construction contractor Autopista del Norte for breaches of a concession agreement. Miranda & Amado co-counselled with Dechert on that case.
Working with King & Spalding, the firm helped a subsidiary of Houston-headquartered Quanta Services win a US$177 million ICC award against a Peruvian government agency over a terminated project to build rural telecoms networks, The two firms are also advising Quanta on a pending ICSID claim against Peru.
The firm has paired with Gibson Dunn to represent Korean energy company SK Innovation in a threatened ICSID claim against Peru. That dispute concerns the blocking of the billion-dollar sale of SK’s gas investments in the Amazon basin.
It is acting with Chaffetz Lindsey for Denmark’s Maersk Group in a contractual ICSID claim over a delay-hit project to modernise one of the country’s largest ports.
The firm also regularly appears as counsel in arbitrations at the Lima Chamber of Commerce. The matters range from construction disputes to issues arising out of shareholder agreements.
In 2022, the firm promoted Luis Alonso Navarro to partner.
| Partners: | 31 |
| Other lawyers: | 82 |
| Total Staff: | 180+ |
The Firm: Miranda & Amado is a full-service Peruvian law firm with an international outlook. A market leader across a range of practice areas, it is renowned for its expert handling of highly sophisticated transactions and cross-border deals for a predominantly multinational clientele. This international experience has led to the team being instructed by clients to coordinate regional transactions in the role traditionally assumed by US firms; this is unique in Peru and rare among law firms across Latin America. Miranda & Amado covers all areas of the law while maintaining its boutique approach to highly sophisticated matters in sectors such as electricity, oil and gas, telecoms, mining, infrastructure, real estate and banking, finance and insurance. Expertise in these fields is well supplemented by market leading practice groups in finance, M&A, litigation, labour, tax, environmental, insolvency, competition and antitrust. The firm also stands out for participating in the most innovative and first-of-their-kind transactions in Peru.
Top-notch Talent: Miranda & Amado is at the forefront of the legal service industry in Peru, for which it relies on its top-notch team of lawyers that is committed to and focused on excellence-based performance. Among the leading Peruvian law firms, Miranda & Amado has by far the highest number of lawyers who have pursued graduate education in the top law schools around the world, and with experience working at top-tier international law firms.
International Work: The firm is part of Affinitas, an alliance established in 2004 and composed of leading law firms in the four countries of the Pacific Alliance. It comprises over 400 lawyers committed to responding to clients’ needs through a close-knit network, ensuring consistency and quality of service.
Dispute Resolution: The firm has been involved in many of the market’s biggest cases in recent years, having -for example- recently represented Redes Andinas de Comunicaciones (a subsidiary of Quanta Inc.) in two landmark ICC arbitrations against the Republic of Peru, obtaining favourable decisions ordering the payment of approximately USD 180 million, the highest monetary award against the Republic of Peru in history. Miranda & Amado has also been involved in multiple other landmark cases, having represented Autopista del Norte, Duke Energy and Bear Creek Mining in their successful ICSID arbitrations against the Peruvian state, three of the only four ICSID cases in which the Republic of Peru has been defeated, as well as representing Pluspetrol and the 6-member consortium in the Camisea ICSID arbitration, which relates to the Camisea gas development, Peru’s biggest ever investment.
The firm has a highly active arbitration practice. During the last 12 months, the firm has handled approximately 50 arbitration procedures. Also, we have developed particularly strong experience in construction arbitration, managing disputes valued at more than USD 2.8 billion in total.
We are pioneer in international arbitration in Peru. During the past 12 months the firm has been involved in more than twelve international arbitrations, having developed market-leading expertise in the area.
The firm’s arbitration practice group has gone from strength to strength since it was established more than a decade ago. The department consolidated its market-leading position in 2019 with the absorption of dispute resolution boutique Priori & Carrillo, which added a further two partners and eight associates to the firm’s already large department.
The firm’s arbitration practice group is led by highly experienced partners: Mauricio Raffo; Cristina Ferraro; José Daniel Amado; Giovanni Priori; and Santiago Carrillo. It also includes impressive young partners Luis Alonso Navarro and Carlos Glave, the latter of whom returned from a stint as foreign associate at Chaffetz Lindsey LLP, in New York, and was made partner in January 2023. The department also comprises a large group of associates with experience in arbitration, of whom José Luis Repetto stands out for his specialisation, leadership, and experience. In total, the firm’s arbitration practice houses 12 associates (out of 16 associates in the dispute resolution practice group), and numerous other associates regularly participate in arbitration on a case-by-case basis.
The firm’s strength in depth in this practice area allows the firm to assemble expert teams on a case-by-case basis, react quickly and simultaneously handle the most complex, time-consuming cases without compromising on quality.
Contact
- LinkedIn: Miranda & Amado
- Twitter: @MAfirma_legal
- Website: mafirma.pe
- Tel: +511 610 4747