Commercial Law

Eastwoods is unique in having a Commercial law group which delivers on all the contracting and specialist legal areas that businesses and public bodies need to accomplish their commercial objectives. The partners in our multi-jurisdictional legal team get to the heart of your business relations, routinely dealing with cross sector issues of both private law and public law.

Corporate Law

Our team advises a range of clients, from some of the Tanzania’s largest companies to growing and start-up businesses. Our firm has full experienced corporate lawyers advising on mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, takeovers, private equity, venture capital, debt and equity issues, corporate reorganizations, corporate governance and company secretarial.

We deal constantly with large-scale projects involving multiple jurisdictions as well as countless day-to-day activities that help our clients manage their operations across the country.

We aim to provide the most transparent and predictable corporate legal offering available. As well as a wealth of experience advising on the most complex, strategic projects for our clients, we also advise on a large volume or smaller transactions. Efficiency and responsiveness are the building blocks of our team.

Banking, Finance and Capital Markets

In today's global economy, we have been quick to respond to the constantly changing financing environment. Our lawyers are renowned for their extensive banking, lending and financing expertise.

In light of the unique risk-oriented nature of a financial institution's business and the highly regulated environment in which it operates, we recognize the importance of providing timely and seamless services to fully protect our clients' legal interests. No complex financing transaction occurs in isolation. In many cases, complexities will arise due to the structuring of acquisitions, due diligence, the creation of holding companies and issues relating to taxation, securities, restructuring and insolvency, pension and employee benefits, labour and real estate. We believe in an interdisciplinary team approach to meeting a client's transactional and advisory needs. Our lawyers are able to access considerable resources and will draw on the expertise of their colleagues for their particular know-how.

We are committed to earning and maintaining the trust and confidence of our clients through the relationships we build and the results we deliver. We believe this enables us to better understand the challenges that face our clients in today's rapidly evolving business, technological and legal environment, and to provide sophisticated and practical advice regarding the various sensitive issues that may arise.

Intellectual Property Rights

Every business has intellectual property (IP) assets worth protecting—patents, trade-marks, copyrights and industrial designs as well as ideas, products, logos, slogans and other designs. Eastwoods can help develop a practical and cost-effective strategy for your IP rights without losing sight of your broader business vision.

With an extensive network of associates providing local IP advice, we assist clients in Tanzania and around the East and Central Africa. Our IP practitioners—lawyers, patent agents and trade-mark agents—cover all aspects of IP protection and enforcement. Our group is composed of experienced IP counsel and litigators who work in multidisciplinary teams to advise our clients on optimizing protection through securing patents, trade-marks, copyrights and other forms of IP protection, branding, advertising, product development and regulatory advice.

We work with business clients ranging from solo inventors and entrepreneurs to small- and medium-sized enterprises and multinational companies. We also work with colleges, universities and government research institutes. On their behalf, we protect, exploit and enforce intellectual property rights and assets.

Labour and Employment Law

Our Employment practice has a strong reputation for delivering solutions-based advice and supports clients in the day-to-day management of their people legal issues and risks.

Eastwoods’ lawyers have considerable experience advising on wide-ranging employment issues relating to large-scale restructurings, mergers and acquisitions, redundancies, business transfers and collective disputes, international secondment issues, and establishing employee benefits and incentives, restraint of trade and competition law.

Litigation and Dispute Resolution

Our lawyers have a reputation for succeeding in the most sensitive and complex of cases. Our approach is to provide pragmatic, commercially-focused legal solutions for our clients’ most complex problems.

Our practice is one of the strongest in Tanzania. We have qualified dispute resolution lawyers who are experienced specialists in litigation, arbitration, mediation and other dispute resolution methods.

Energy and Natural Resources

Energy and natural resources companies face many challenges but also opportunities in terms of technological change, geopolitics, globalization and urbanization. Competitiveness and sustainability are mutually reinforcing concepts. Energy security, future supplies, reserve replacement, production growth and price volatility are all key challenges facing companies in the sector. In turn, issues such as acquisition and consolidation are never far from the agenda.

Now, more than ever, there is a need for professionals to define and execute successful strategies. Eastwoods Attorneys works with a wide range of Energy & Natural Resources companies to help drive business success. We offer a number of services to those clients, aiming to create the conditions in which they can thrive, helping to maximize their development.

Our firm is comprised of lawyers with a large experience on the Energy Industry as a consequence of their continuous work with several industry stakeholders.

Taxation

The complexity of local and international taxation rules determines an increasing need for expert tax advice, which assumes a crucial role in the modern market, as it evolves into more complex transactions. Our experience dictates that every business transaction always has direct or indirect tax consequences, which require an efficient tax planning, identification of the most tax efficient structures in order to avoid future unnecessary liabilities.

To maximize the efficiency of our client's current taxation and bearing in mind their global aims, Eastwoods provides strategic advice at every stage of transactions, on all aspects of domestic and international tax, in co-ordination with our other practice areas, providing a tax-related advice as part of an integrated service, as well as direct advice to the clients.

Real Estate and Construction

We provide our clients with expert legal advice concerning real estate and construction transactions. Our clients include lenders, contractors, developers and project managers.

Our lawyers are highly qualified in assisting and advising on drafting appropriate agreements in relation to acquisition of lands, property development, joint ventures, project finance, environmental impact assessments, apportionment procedures and agreements, turn key projects, design-build and plant contracts, owners’ representative agreements, construction management, tenders, and dispute adjudication agreements and construction agreements.

Eastwoods also assists clients in relation to the purchase, sale and development of real estate projects, leasing or sale of units, managing properties and handling all legal issues between co-owners and tenants.

Criminal Law

Our firm provides legal assistance in all criminal and minor-offense areas, especially in economic and financial crimes, not neglecting, however, common criminal law.

We give special attention to administrative litigation for the relevance and intensity it has gained, mainly because of the growing role of administrative organisms and entities of regulation.