Negotiation

When the terms are fine and the deal still will not close

Most negotiations that reach us are not stuck on price. The commercial case has been made, counsel has papered the structure, and the process has still stopped. What is holding it up is almost always something that never appeared in the deal documents: an unstated regulatory objection, a decision-maker nobody identified, a political calendar that makes agreement impossible this quarter, or a counterparty who cannot sell the deal internally in the form it has been offered.

Cross-border negotiation is a different discipline from domestic dealmaking. The positions on the table are shaped by what each side has to be able to defend at home — to a ministry, a board, a coalition partner, or a public that has its own history with foreign investment. A term that reads as ordinary in one capital reads as capitulation in another.

What we do

We start by establishing who actually decides. In government counterparties this is rarely the person across the table, and the real veto often sits with an agency that has not been in the room. We map that structure before proposing anything.

From there we build the sequence: which conversations happen in what order, which concessions are worth making early to buy credibility, and which must be held. We work on what each side needs to be able to say afterwards, because an agreement neither party can defend publicly will not survive its first political test.

Where the relationship has already broken down, we act as an intermediary. Parties who have stopped speaking to each other will often speak to a third party who has no stake in who was right.

Conflict and deadlock

A meaningful share of our work is conflict negotiation — disputes between partners, between an investor and a host government, or between a company and a regulator that has moved from disagreement into open hostility. These matters rarely resolve through escalation, and litigation across jurisdictions is slow, expensive, and often ends the commercial relationship whatever the ruling.

We look for the version of the outcome that both sides can accept without either having to concede publicly. That usually means finding what each party actually needs, as distinct from what it has been demanding.

Where this fits

Negotiation work frequently reveals a capacity problem underneath — an organization agreeing to obligations it is not structured to meet. Where delivery depends on physical or institutional infrastructure that does not yet exist, it runs alongside infrastructure development.