José María Viñals

Partner at Squire Patton Boggs

Speaker

José María Viñals heads the international trade and sanctions practice in the EU, and has over 20 years of experience, with a focus on trade, sanctions, export controls and trade compliance. He is active in the fields of foreign direct investment (FDI), investment protection and, more recently, supply chain compliance. He has extensive experience in providing sanctions-related legal assistance to global companies in the energy, financial and transportation sectors, as well as to multilateral institutions.

José María is ranked by Chambers and Partners for his excellent work and for his experience in trade and sanctions-related work, and he is recognised among foreign-based corporate and commercial lawyers in both Chambers Global and Chambers Latin America. He is also ranked in other prestigious directories such as The Legal 500 and was recognised with Iberian Lawyer’s 40 Under 40 award in 2017, which is conferred on the 40 most prestigious lawyers under the age of 40 in Spain and Portugal.

He is a professor of international law and trade and a director of the international relations master’s at the IEB Business School. Among other publications, José María has co-authored the Handbook on International Sanctions, which provides guidance to companies and in-house counsel on navigating the complex regulatory framework of international sanctions. He has also co-authored Investments Abroad: Mechanisms of Protection, published by Thomson Aranzadi in 2017. Likewise, he has co-written Comments to the Arbitration Law of 2003 (Aranzadi, 2005), and authored Code of Arbitration (Aranzadi, 2005), a work of compilation and commentary on legal matters and rules of arbitration, as well as the Cuban chapter of International Franchises 2016: Legal and Commercial Considerations.

José María regularly writes articles for the Spanish business and legal press, such as Expansión, Cinco Días and Latin Lawyer, and is frequently consulted as an expert in the protection of foreign investments and international sanctions both in radio media and in televised discussions in Spain.

He is a regular guest speaker on matters such as international law, oratory and dialectics, investment protection and international sanctions at various universities in Spain and abroad, including ICADE, Instituto de Empresa, Menéndez Pelayo International University, Public University of Navarra, Madrid’s Universidad a Distancia, the University of Havana and the University of Alicante. Further, he has talked at events organised by the Cuban Organización Nacional de Bufetes Colectivos (ONBC), the Brookings Institution, The Economist and the Wharton Business School.