About G. Elias

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We regularly advise and represent clients on several of the most sensitive, large, complex, novel and critical matters in our market.

Some of the highlights of our practice are the following:

• The merger of the Sokoto Cement Company plc and the Kalambaina Cement Company (the merged entity had a “market cap” just short of USD3bn)
• The acquisition of Union Bank of Nigeria Plc (Nigeria’s second oldest bank) by Titan Trust Bank Ltd
• Crude oil forward sale financings for an aggregate total of over USD3bn for Shell, Chevron, and Total petroleum entities
• Pioneering Investment treaty and commercial arbitrations for over USD2bn in aggregate value against Nigerian Federal governmental defendants
• The concessions and other documentation for the nation’s busiest "metro" rail system (estimated cost circa USD2bn)
• Over USD3bn worth of currency swaps and securities lending deals for leading global North American and Asian financial institutions
• The largest insolvencies, with an aggregate value of nearly USD3bn, in the Nigerian aviation (on the creditor side), telecommunications (mainly on the debtor side), and oil-and-gas (for the creditor) sectors
• The development of iconic malls and luxury residential properties
• Initial public offerings for leading telecommunications and technology sector operators
• The then largest loans ever from a multilateral lender to a Nigerian bank (USD1.75bn in aggregate from the African Export-Import Bank to the Bank of Industry)
• Advice to supranational sponsors on a series of water infrastructure and world-class hospitals developments
• A pioneering USD742mm transaction to exchange NNPC-First E&P crude oil for Schlumberger Group oilfield services
• The sale for USD800mm to a Kellogg entity of a controlling stake in Nigeria’s largest food products manufacturing and logistics business (Tolaram (Indomie Noodles)
• The acquisition by a leading global Chinese investor of a controlling stake in Nigeria’s pioneering, USD1.5bn, deep-sea port developer
•  The establishment of major transformative telecommunications businesses (a 5G operator; a mobile virtual national operator (MVNO)
•  The establishment of a state-sponsored vehicle to deploy over 5 million electric power meters nationwide in less than 3 years.
• The defence of a leading global manufacturer of consumer products in a series of product liability claims for an aggregate total of over USD20billion
• A large pioneering bond offering programme for the then equivalent of over USD1bn by the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company, a government-backed secondary mortgage financier
• A thermal 950MW IPP in Northern Nigeria for the BUA Group-Siemens consortium
• Advice Shell Petroleum on the sale of a large portfolio of onshore upstream assets
• A large gas sales agreement to a pioneering independent power project owner (by Seplat Plc to the Azura IPP project)
• The over N1bn rehabilitation of NNPC depots, pipelines and other downstream facilities by a consortium of Nigerian and international investors and contractors
• The defence of global consumer brand owners against the competition law regulator administrative proceedings
• An impact investment fund sponsored by a leading energy sector multinational on what has become by far the nation’s most extensive programme of renewables sector investments (over 35 thus far, and counting)
• Advice to the Lagos State Government on the largest states bond offering programme (USD1.1bn equivalent in general, “Sukuk” and “Green” bonds) in Nigerian history

We espouse the values, priorities, and psychology of a traditional professional services partnership. We use and celebrate the organizational resources and methods -- not least significant investment in specialist professionals and advanced technology -- that every ambitious modern institution should rely on.

Our paramount aim is always to give our clients service of the very highest quality. That means that we emphasize technical proficiency, speed of response, attention to detail, and creativity in developing practical solutions to clients’ challenges.

We especially value teamwork, responsiveness, imagination and technical rigour. We aim always to exceed our clients’ expectations and to improve continuously in every aspect of what we do. It goes without saying that we work to the very highest ethical standards.

We are deeply passionate about being the most proficient lawyers that we can be, about acquiring even more proficiency with every passing year, and about ensuring that each of our associates gets a superlative professional developmental experience with us.

We set high bars for ourselves and insist on raising those bars continually. We always insist on ability, commitment, and decency. Beyond these, we seek and encourage diversity in background and gender among our lawyers on the view that such diversity can only enrich our insights, outlook, experience, and capacity for empathy with our clients.

The agenda was and is to be an unusually closely-knit team of versatile experts doing the most challenging legal work of ambitious business clients in every sector, with passion and intensity, and to the highest standards.

We are an orthodox professional partnership, slow to engage in lateral hiring and to depart from its “lockstep” system of recognizing our partners. Each of our partners is, and has always been, both a general partner and an equity partner.

We aim to do the most critical, complex, and innovative work for serious business clients, whether the clients are young or old, Nigerian or international, famous or self-effacing, big or small.  We have been certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

We do not seek to be the largest law firm by headcount, and we do not necessarily prefer large clients to small ones. Our focus is on having clients who will challenge us and lawyers who in number and skill are able to discharge with excellence the consequential and challenging tasks that we take on. 

We are known for our sensitivity to clients’ business needs and concerns, and promptness in responding to and executing their requests in dealing with business law assignments of every consequence, complexity, magnitude and novelty.

Every assignment that we take on is overseen by a partner who is responsible for the quality of the service that we render and liaising regularly with the client on the progress of the work.

We strive to develop our associates such that each of them will become both a general strategic counsellor and a specialized expert in one or more of the areas that we work in.

We realize that for most clients it is attractive, as much as possible, to have a single lawyer who will both master the business background to the full range of the client’s work and plans and have the technical competence to advise on more than one of the practice areas that are relevant to the client.

We, therefore, insist that each of our more experienced associates must have more than one field of narrow technical expertise and not many clients to look after. In this way, we remain versatile without loss of depth or expertise.

It is also important to us that we should not cause our clients unwelcome surprises. Every client should be carried along at every stage of their work, and agreements on fees and expenses with clients should be fully respected.

We encourage, but do not require, every associate to have expertise in both one practice area and one sector to the extent that the individual can do so without impairing the level of his or her proficiency. Versatility is more than welcome as long as standards of excellence are maintained.

A programme of training courses has been developed for all our lawyers. A wide range of the courses are on areas that are at the core of our work and are conducted in-house by our own lawyers.

Our lawyers also attend both publicly-available and bespoke courses led by professional instructors from outside the firm both in Nigeria and abroad on other legal subjects and on non-law subjects such as basic accounting and investment banking. 

Our strategy is to grow only as quickly as we can hire and develop exceptionally-able lawyers who have the experience and temperament to be general partners to serve our clients well and lead our growth.

We are also very much an independent business law practice led by a partnership into which associates who have served an “apprenticeship” with the practice may be admitted.

The bases for admission to the partnership are lawyerly ability and seniority. From inception, we have been committed to searching for and hiring talented and motivated young lawyers, and to training and promoting them through the ranks to become proficient, versatile and business-minded legal practitioners.

From the start, each of our associates works regularly with a partner and gets frequent contact with clients. These features of our practice enable our associates to develop a capacity for responsibility far more quickly than would otherwise be possible.