Ricardo Guimarães

Ricardo focuses on litigation and arbitration, advising on a wide range of commercial contract and intellectual property disputes. He has extensive experience in acting for governments, state-owned enterprises and private organisations on public law disputes, public procurement, public works contracts, public service concession contracts (particularly in the road, water and wastewater sectors), concession contracts (particularly in the healthcare sector) and Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracts.

Ricardo also advises domestic and foreign clients on national and international legal issues, with particular experience in matters involving Angolan and Mozambican law.

Ricardo acts as arbitrator for the Arbitration Centre of the Lisbon and Oporto Commercial Association and the Concordia Arbitration Centre.

Work highlights

Ricardo acts for clients on a wide range of disputes. These include:

• Concession rebalancing arbitrations: advising private concessionaires and public granters on long-term concession contracts and high-impact financial disputes, particularly in water distribution, waste treatment, infrastructure and health sectors

• Concession contract arbitrations: advising concessionaires on a series of long-term concession contracts where validity is being disputed. The successful outcome of several cases helped avert related potential litigation

• Commercial contracts arbitration and litigation: advising on real estate disputes and joint venture disputes

• Public contracts arbitration and litigation: advising public and private parties in disputes related to the execution of public works contracts, to contractual penalties, to the extension of contractual deadlines, to claims regarding the payment of extra works performed under the contract or to the determination of the impact of unforeseen circumstances

• Public procurement litigation: advising on complex public procurement cases regarding the award of different public contracts

Ricardo is active in the arbitration community, as a member of the Permanent Council of Arbitration and playing a key role in a number of committees of the Portuguese Arbitration Association (APA).

Ricardo is a member of the supervisory board of the Portuguese Law Firm Association (ASAP) and was previously treasurer of Legalink, an international association of law firms.

Ricardo regularly speaks at arbitration conferences organised by national and international arbitration institutions and portuguese universities. He has published several articles on public law litigation and domestic and international arbitration issues, including:

“Arbitration in Mozambique”, The Middle Eastern and African Arbitration Review 2016 and 2017, Global Arbitration Review, with Nuno Ferreira Lousa

“Os recursos no Código de Processo nos Tribunais Administrativos”, AAFDL, 2016

“Gestão dos Tribunais”, Cadernos de Justiça Administrativa, XVI Seminário de Justiça Administrativa, 2014

Ricardo studied law at Lusíada University and taxation and accounting at the Institute of Higher Studies. He obtained postgraduate degrees in taxation from the University of Lisbon and in administrative law from the Catholic University of Portugal.

He speaks English, Portuguese and Spanish.