Biography

Educational/ Current position / Professional Experience

Guy Harles is a Founding Partner and Chairman of Arendt & Medernach. He advises multinational and domestic companies, as well as HNWIs on the structuring of international transactions, private equity investments, corporate reorganizations, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and private wealth management.

He is a former President of EuroArbitrage, Paris and presently serves as Chair of the Luxembourg Arbitration Association (LAA). Guy served as a mediator appointed by the Paris Chamber of commerce in a dispute between two European banks. Guy served as Chair (Bâtonnier) of the Luxembourg Bar Council from 2011 to 2012. He has been a member of the Paris Bar since 1993 and was admitted as a foreign lawyer to the Hong Kong Bar in 2009. He was the president of the Luxembourg Young Bar Association and of AIJA (International Young Lawyers’ Association). Guy currently serves as an officer on the Corporate and M&A law committee of the IBA and is a director of Lex Mundi.

He graduated in 1979 from the Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg with a Master’s degree in law and an advanced degree (DESS) in banking and finance. Only three years later he started as a lecturer on business law at the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg, the Faculty of Law (University of Luxembourg), at the Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg) from 1981 to 2007 and at the Université Paul Cézanne (Aix en Provence) from 2010 to 2012.
Guy started his professional career in the finance department of Arbed, now part of ArcelorMittal, working on long-term debt and export financing.

Arbitration Experience

Acting as Counsel :
• in a domestic ad hoc arbitration in relation to real estate projects and hotel contracts (Luxembourg law)
• An international ICC arbitration seated in Luxembourg arising out of a stock purchase agreement (Luxembourg law)
Acting as Arbitrator:
• As sole arbitrator in an international ICC arbitration in relation to a commercial machinery contract (German law)
• As sole arbitrator in an international ICC arbitration in relation to a software contract (Luxembourg law)
• As sole arbitrator in an international ICC arbitration in relation to raw materials contracts between an African company and a European company (French law)
• As sole arbitrator appointed by the European Court of Arbitration in ad hoc international proceedings in relation to an agency contract (French law)
• As chairman in an international CEPANI arbitration in relation to a merger and acquisition dispute (Swiss law);
• As chairman in an international ICC arbitration arising out of a distribution contract of chemical products between Easter European parties (French law)

Publications and Speaking Engagements

• ICCA International Handbook on Commercial Arbitration , annual update Chapter for Luxembourg (Binder IV)