The lawyers in our Charleston office counsel local, regional, and international business clients in a wide range of matters involving resort and hospitality, labor and employment, business disputes, environmental, construction, intellectual property litigation, banking and tax, and corporate/M&A. With a thriving economy, Charleston provides one of the busiest container ports in the United States, a multi-billion dollar tourism industry, and one of the Southeast’s largest medical hubs. South Carolina has long been attractive to national and international manufacturers and its business-friendly environment offers compelling growth opportunities to industries from hospitality and information technology to banking, shipping, and manufacturing.
Our multinational resort and hospitality practice focuses on resort, hotel, golf, and real estate development and transactions in the United States, Caribbean, and Latin America, along with emerging hospitality markets around the globe. Our capabilities include representing clients in structuring and documenting resort, urban, and other planned and mixed-use communities; negotiating development agreements with governments and assisting governments in enacting pro-development legislation; preparing management agreements, franchise agreements, and other documentation associated with the sale, acquisition, and financing of hotels, golf clubs, marinas, and other leisure projects; and representing clients in the financing, restructuring, and sale and purchase of such assets.
The labor and employment team handles all types of employment and labor disputes, including class and collective actions and multi-district litigation. The team also counsels employers on leave issues, positive and legally viable employment practices, reductions in force and plant closings, the sale and acquisition of domestic and foreign businesses, executive terminations and severance packages, and union avoidance. The team represents local, regional, national, and multinational companies in industries ranging from athletic equipment and aviation to banking, health care, manufacturing, telecommunications, and textiles. In addition, they also handle restrictive covenant and intellectual property disputes that arise out of the employment relationship. The litigation team handles all types of business and commercial disputes, including class actions and bet-the-company litigation. The team represents local, regional, national, and multinational companies in virtually every industry. The team also handles environmental and construction disputes, as well as white collar criminal defense, intellectual property litigation, and appellate litigation. Our lawyers in the banking and tax group represent CMBS mortgage portfolio servicers, master servicers, and borrowers in a variety of financing transactions, including defeasances, assumptions, workouts, restructurings, and the origination of commercial mortgage loans. The team also has significant experience in transfers of business interests involving REMICs. Additionally, our team represents banks, investment funds, and private equity firms in distressed asset stand alone and loan portfolio acquisitions, workouts, and dispositions, in addition to advising on the tax aspects of such transactions. Our capabilities include counseling clients on the tax aspects of real estate financings, mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity offerings and restructurings, fund formations, and all varieties of tax pass-through financing entities. Our corporate/M&A capabilities include advising clients in corporate counseling, structuring and executing mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, and real estate and resort development. Representing FORTUNE 500 companies as well as middle-market and emerging growth companies in a variety of industries, our team also has significant experience coordinating and supervising multinational matters.