Winston & Strawn LLP

Edouard de Rancher’s practice focuses on corporate taxation, both domestic and international, and tax litigation. He is mostly involved in domestic and cross-border M&A transactions as well as in the resolution of complex tax issues for his clients (tax planning, reorganizations, financing, international development). He also assists executives in personal tax matters as well as groups and institutions in their non-profit activities. Edouard has significant experience in the healthcare and new technology sectors.

Former managing partner of the firm’s Paris office and head of the Corporate and Health Care Departments, Gilles Bigot advises and defends French and European leaders such as publicly and privately managed health institutions, laboratories, professional associations, medical equipment and pharmaceutical product manufacturers, and health care practitioners. He is considered to be an architect in the health care field.

Julie Vern Cesano-Gouffrant advises French and foreign companies on corporate and finance transactions, especially mergers and acquisitions and private equity transactions. Julie focuses her practice in a variety of areas including mergers and acquisitions, private equity, capital markets, corporate restructurings, investments, corporate governance, finance and other general corporate matters. She represents publicly and privately held companies in connection with acquisitions, dispositions, leveraged buyouts, joint ventures, recapitalizations, and debt finance transactions. Her practice involves the negotiation and drafting of commercial contracts and services agreements. Prior to joining the firm, Julie spent a total of eight years serving as an attorney for a United Kingdom law firm and a French law firm and another three years as the in-house counsel for an industry group. 

Maria Kostytska is head of the arbitration practice of the firm’s Paris office. She acts as lead counsel in investor-state and commercial arbitration and litigation across a variety of industrial sectors, including oil and gas, renewable energy, utilities, infrastructure, banking, aviation and manufacturing. She also serves as arbitrator.

Mounir Letayf leads the Paris office banking and finance practice. He has extensive experience in acquisition finance covering a large spectrum of financing products (senior, second lien, mezzanine, unirate/unitranche, PIK, TLB, high-yield, SSRCF). Additional core areas of practice are real estate finance, project finance, debt restructuring and structured finance (factoring and securitization). Mounir advises lenders (banks, private debt funds and alternative debt providers) as well as sponsors and borrowers (investment funds and listed and non-listed companies) on domestic and cross-border transactions. Prior to joining the Firm, Mounir was a partner at the Paris office of a leading US international firm. He is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Arabic.

With her access to US, EU and French regulators, for fifteen plus years, Sara Susnjar has assisted clients with their domestic and cross-border regulatory work, whether advisory, implementation, investigation or dispute, especially in the financial services and banking, healthcare, technology and new media and telecommunications sectors.

Virgile Puyau is a seasoned labor and employment attorney representing French and international clients on a variety of transactional and litigation matters involving individual and collective labor relations, employee benefits, and executive compensation.