Orlando J Casares

Bar Membership:

• Bar Association Texas
• Bar Association Belgium

Education:

• Business Degree, University of Houston, Texas, 1989.
• Juris Doctorate Law Degree, Baylor University Law School (Texas, USA), 1991.
• LL.M in EU Law from Deusto University, Bilbao, Spain, 1993.

Areas of Expertise:

• General Corporate Commercial
• Mergers and acquisitions throughout EMEA, including Antitrust
• Technology licenses enforceable under local and EU law
• Proprietary infringement protection and litigation and general IP law
• Securing strategic partners in mission-critical areas of R&D and commercialization
• Integrating acquired company into new management structures and delivering needed legal certainty
• Due diligence on investments and post acquisition clean up
• Daily general counseling of new companies on all ongoing commercial and legal needs, both on business issues and strategic issues throughout Europe, Mid-East, North Africa, and Asia Pacific
• Establishment, structuring and effective distribution and agency networks
• EU regulatory affairs, including product safety, packaging and waste recycling trademark usage, and environmental law
• Project management including legal details of plant expansion and closures as well as Greenfield developments
• EU Project funding and co-investment. 

Languages:

• English, Spanish, French, Italian.

Achievements:

• Mr. Casares served as EMEA General Counsel for Donaldson Company Inc., (1993-1998) a NYSE publicly traded 10,000 employee Fortune Company, and a leading worldwide provider of filtration systems and replacement parts since 1915, with responsibility for establishing expanding and managing key business development and commercial issues for approximately a two billion dollar industrial company in nine European countries, as well as aggressively expanding a Middle East and Africa presence. During his tenure as GC, Mr. Casares was also responsible for coordinating and managing mergers and acquisitions, addressing US-EU, import and export regulations for compliance under the Bureau of Export Administration, the Department of Commerce, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury.

• After founding First Law International, through joint venture agreements with best-in-class, mid-tier law firms in over twenty countries in Europe, Mid-East, and Asia Pacific (FLI NET™), Mr. Casares has been responsible for managing cross-border work for a number of US Multinational Companies requiring legal support including Franklin Covey, Micromuse, Adaptec, Kinetics, Magma Design, Vital Networks, NATCO and others. Through Mr. Casares cutting-edge vision, he designed the FLI WebTool™ , a powerful resource created by general counsels for the daily use of a general and senior corporate counsel as well as executive management, which enables clients world-wide to direct their work-in-progress, real time across a variety of time zones while tracking the budgets spent on legal support worldwide.

• Mr. Casares has been residing in Brussels for the thirteen years where he is an active member of the community.