Mr. Gil Anav is a partner with Lee Anav Chung White Kim Ruger & Richter LLP and the head of its Mexico City office. Mr. Anav is a Los Angeles native who has lived and worked in Mexico City since late 1994. He also remains an active member of the California State Bar.

Mr. Anav’s professional experience includes work as a law clerk to Los Angeles City Councilmember Joel Wachs and U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Conboy of the Southern District of New York. Mr. Anav was formerly associated with Brobeck Phleger & Harrison’s Los Angeles office from 1989 through 1994, where he handled a wide variety of complex business litigation matters, including insurance coverage, unfair competition, First Amendment, and banking cases.

Mr. Anav’s Latin America practice focuses on Mexico. Mr. Anav has advised numerous private companies and Mexican government agencies on issues relating to U.S.-Mexico transactions. Representative clients have included Grupo Televisa, Pepsi-Gemex, S.A. de C.V., Pemex, Embotelladora Garci Crespo, Internacional Farmacéutica, S.A. de C.V., Corporativo Infra, Boehringer-Ingelheim Promeco, GlaxoSmithKline, the Mills Corporation and the Animas Foundation. From 2003-2004, Gil was the Acting Legal Director of The Pepsi Bottling Group México, S. de R.L. de C.V., Mexico’s largest producer of Pepsi products and bottled water, with close to 23,000 employees.

In the government sector, Mr. Anav has advised the Mexican National Tourism Fund (“FONATUR”) and the Ministry of the Environment. Mr. Anav has also advised four arbitration panels formed under Chapter XIX of NAFTA to decide disputes regarding antidumping duties imposed by Mexico and the United States.

Mr. Anav’s practice in Mexico has included negotiating and establishing joint ventures between U.S. and Mexican companies, establishing and/or advising on compliance programs under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and U.S. securities laws, setting up maquiladora companies and related entities, and protecting his clients’ intellectual property assets through proceedings before the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Mr. Anav has also advised clients on Mexican business immigration matters. As part of his Latin America practice, Mr. Anav has also worked on various expert opinions on Mexican legal issues for use in American litigation and arbitration cases.

Mr. Anav has given numerous courses and talks in Mexico on cross-border matters and other U.S. and Mexican legal issues. Mr. Anav currently teaches classes on the U.S. legal system at the Universidad Panamericana (routinely ranked as one of the top two law faculties in Mexico) and at the Universidad Anáhuac, and led a course on Introduction to the Mexican Legal System at the Chicago-Kent summer program held at the Mexico City campus of the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey.

Mr. Anav has also been an outside instructor with Bancomext (Mexico’s equivalent of the United States Export-Import Bank) and teaches courses and seminars on International Contracts and on legal requirements for exporting goods to the United States. In the past, Mr. Anav has given seminars on these topics in in numerous locations around Mexico on behalf of Bancomext. Mr. Anav has also given talks on Mexico-U.S. trade topics at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at various universities around Mexico.

Education

Brandeis University, summa cum laude (B.A., 1984)
Oxford University (M.Phil., 1986)
Columbia University (J.D., 1989)
National Autonomous University of Mexico (Licenciatura degree)

Published Works and Presentations

Mr. Anav has published numerous articles on U.S. and Mexican legal topics in the Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas and the Revista de la Facultad de Derecho de México. He also publishes a regular column for the National Council of the Maquiladora Export Industry, advising its members on recent developments in Mexican law.