Biography: Arbitration

Mauricio Almeida Prado is partner of Brazilian law firm LO Baptista Advogados, where he heads the arbitration department together with Luiz Olavo Baptista and Adriana Braghetta.

He has broad experience both in international business transactions and in international arbitration. His practice covers a wide range of industries (eg, energy, steel, ethanol, construction, real estate) and commercial transactions (eg, M&A agreements, EPCs, joint ventures, transfer of technology). He is an associate member of the ICC Institute of World Business Law and the Societé de Législation Comparée. He is also among the Brazilian practitioners featured in Chambers & Partners: Latin America's Leading Lawyers for Business and Latin Lawyer 250.

Mr Almeida Prado graduated and obtained his LLM from the University of São Paulo (1989 and 1995), and in 2001 got his PhD from the University of Paris-X (Nanterre), summa cum laude. He has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Unification of International Private Law (Unidroit, 1997), and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Paris II (Panthéon-Assaz, 2009). Mr Almeida Prado is author of the books The Hardship Theory in International Business Law (France, 2003), International Transfer of Technology Agreements (Brazil, 1997) and has recently coordinated (together with Mr Baptista) the book Construction and Law (Brazil, 2011). Since 2003, he has been professor of law at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (São Paulo), where he teaches negotiation, arbitration and business law. In addition, he has been invited to speak at numerous local and international conferences in the areas of international contracts, arbitration and construction law.

Mr Almeida Prado is fluent in Portuguese, French and English.