Public-Private Partnerships.
The digital State, from the sponsor’s perspective.
The firm advises industrial sponsors and operating investors in the design, negotiation and execution of partnerships with States and their agencies. The transactions handled concern critical infrastructure, sovereign platforms and digital public services, in France, the Mediterranean basin and French-speaking Africa.
The practice is distinguished by a reading of matters from the private operator’s perspective. Without abandoning an understanding of the grammar of public authorities. This dual fluency constitutes the heart of the counsel given.
Where the State modernises, the sponsor must be able to build a sustainable economy.
Designing partnerships that hold over time requires aligning three temporalities: that of the industrial project, that of the financing, that of public procurement. The firm conducts its matters within this alignment.
Areas of intervention.
Digital identity & sovereign services
Design and structuring of sovereign digital identity platforms, civil registries, secure electronic titles and authentication services anchored in public administrations. Counsel covers the contractual architecture, the requirements of technical sovereignty and the allocation of responsibilities between the State, the operator and suppliers.
E-customs, e-taxation, e-procurement
Modernisation of large economic administrations. The firm advises prospective operators on the design and operation of single-window customs systems, tax collection platforms and electronic public procurement systems, particularly in jurisdictions where the State outsources a structuring portion of its sovereign function.
FATF compliance & financial integrity
Structuring of national anti-money-laundering platforms and compliance with international standards. The practice includes counsel on the articulation between sovereign obligations, the requirements of international lenders and the economic viability for the delegated private operator.
Sovereign infrastructure
Ports, terminals, logistics platforms, telecommunications infrastructure and sovereign data centres. The firm conducts the contractual, real estate and grant-related aspects of projects, as well as negotiations with supervisory authorities, lenders and co-investors.
PPPs with user payment or deferred public payment
Design of the contractual architecture, negotiation of service commitments, economic balance of the project, mechanisms for tariff review or availability-based payment, end-of-contract clauses and asset transfer provisions. The firm intervenes at all phases, from upstream preparation to post-signing dispute resolution.
Structuring through dedicated vehicles
Constitution and governance of project companies, articulation between industrial and financial shareholders, agreements tailored to multilateral lenders’ constraints, securing of cash flows and financing of operations. The firm pays particular attention to exit mechanisms and stability clauses.
The moments when
the balance must be held.
A public-private partnership is not a transaction that closes. It is a balance between parties whose interests, aligned at the outset, diverge as the project lives on. The firm intervenes at the points where that balance comes under strain.
When three clocks do not keep the same time.
The industrial project, the financing and the public procurement each advance on their own timeline, rarely compatible. Before signing, the firm aligns these three calendars in the architecture of the contract, so that the gap does not become a fault line at the first delay.
A service commitment must hold for twenty years.
A service level promised on the day of the bid will have to hold for two decades. It must be set to what it can truly sustain over time, not to what wins the tender. The distance between the two is the ordinary ground of performance disputes.
When promised performance and a sustainable tariff cease to coincide.
The price paid by the user or the public authority must remain bearable without starving the operator. The firm designs the tariff-review and availability-payment mechanisms that allow the contract to absorb the gap rather than break on it.
When the rule changes after signing.
A regulatory shift, a new lender requirement, a change of supervising authority. The contract will live through events no party had foreseen. That risk is allocated before signing, not on the day the contract begins to strain.
State sovereignty and private operation coexist poorly without a boundary.
On sovereign infrastructure, the State cannot delegate everything, the operator cannot carry everything. The firm draws the boundary of responsibilities between the State, the operator and the suppliers, where a grey zone would one day become a dispute.
When the time comes to exit without breaking continuity.
End of contract, sale of the project company, transfer of assets to the public authority: the service must not stop when the sponsor departs. The firm prepares the end-of-contract and hand-back provisions from the outset, so that the exit is a passage, not a rupture.