ESPAÑOL

Biography

Rafael M. Manóvil has been a partner of our law firm since January 2003, as the result of the professional association between M. & M. Bomchil and the law firm Zaldívar, Manóvil & Asociados, of which Manóvil was a founding member.

He is the partner in charge of both Corporate and Commercial Law Departments. Due to his extensive academic and professional experience he is a consulting lawyer of several other practice areas of the firm, especially in private law matters.

Dr. Manóvil was born in Buenos Aires in 1944. He graduated as a lawyer from Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), School of Law in 1966. Later on, at the same university he specialised in Legal Business Counseling; moreover, he became a Public Translator (German) and obtained a Ph.D in Law, regarding which he received the “Faculty” prize for the best thesis of the year. Along his career, he attended Public International Law courses at University College, London University. As a professor, he was awarded with a scholarship by Max Planck Institut für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht from Hamburg in order to investigate corporate issues in comparative law.

After having served since 1970 as ordinary Professor of Commercial Law, he became Professor Emeritus of the same subject, and Director of the Corporate Law Postgraduate Program. He has previously been a board member of the University. He also serves as Professor of the Business Law Master courses at Universidad Austral, and of the Master courses of Law and Economics at Universidad Di Tella. He frequently lectures at different universities, and has widely lectured on his specialisation in Argentina, Germany, Canada, Spain and Uruguay and has taken part as reader and panelist in more than seventy national and international conferences.

Among his many publications, he is worth mentioning as co-author of the four volumes of “Cuadernos de Derecho Societario”, and “Contratos de Colaboración Empresaria”; and he also published “Grupos de Sociedades en el Derecho Comparado”, a work of 1200 pages that won the prize of Academia Nacional de Derecho de la República Argentina as the best legal work of the year. He has also published more than seventy articles, contributions to works and papers on Corporate Law, Law of Contracts, Bankruptcy Law and Nuclear Law, both in Argentina and abroad.

He took part in the legislative activity as a member of the “Comisión Federal” appointed by the House of Representatives, which in 1992/3 drafted a project of Uniform Civil and Commercial Code, and of the committee appointed by the Ministry of Justice to draft an International Private Law Code, which was delivered in May 2003.

Dr. Manóvil’s professional experience began in 1967. Then, he was a founding member of the law firm Zaldívar, Manóvil & Asociados, specialising in commercial companies and inter-company legal structures, corporate disputes, commercial agreements, bankruptcy law and national and international arbitration.

Dr. Manóvil counsels different sectors of businesses, including banks and insurance companies. He acted as attorney in several corporate litigations that became leading cases in Argentina. He was attorney-in-fact for the syndic of Sasetru S.A.’s bankruptcy, as well as its thirty-seven affiliated companies, one of the most important bankruptcies that occurred in the country. On the other hand, he has also been director of several companies, including BMW de Argentina S.A. He has participated in important arbitration proceedings both as attorney and arbitrator.

In 2009 Dr. Manóvil was appointed regular member of the Academia Nacional de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales. He is also a member of several scientific and professional associations, such as the International Nuclear Law Association ( he is member of the Board since 1985); Asociación Jurídica Argentino-Germana (he was its president between 1987 and 2010 and he currently holds the position of honorary president); Colegio de Abogados de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires; International Bar Association; International Law Association; Asociación Argentina de Derecho Comparado; Academie Internationale de Droit Comparé; Instituto de Derecho Empresario de la Academia Nacional de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales; and Sociedad Científica Argentina.