Contacts
Fernando Aued Co-Heads the firm’s Litigation and Arbitration Practice Group.
Fernando is a Chambers-ranked litigator and arbitration specialist, with 20+ years of experience in the resolution of commercial, civil, administrative, and maritime conflicts, oftentimes with complex international components.
Fernando has also successfully advised local and international clients on regulatory matters, primarily in the energy and telecommunications sectors.
He is a member of the Dispute Resolution Commission, and Chair of the Commercial Law and Practices Commission of the ICC Panama Chapter.
Fernando has a Master of Commercial Law (Maîtrise en Droit, Mention Droit Des Affaires, Master I), from L’Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III, and a Bachelor of Laws (Licenciado en Derecho y Ciencias Políticas) from Santa Maria La Antigua University. He is fluent in Spanish English, French and Italian.
With more than 33 years of experience, Mr. Loaiza stands out as one of the leading shipping lawyers in the country.
On heading the firm’s group, having handled and currently attending to numerous standard administrative tasks in the areas of registration and mortgage filing procedures, he has also assisted and represented clients in complex sale and purchase deals, inventive ship security models, drafting of maritime contracts, under-construction ship finance structuring, technical aspects and compliance under international maritime conventions and innovating in maritime litigation strategies. He was one of the main contributors to a newly adopted Law for Promotion of Maritime Projects Financing, and has been involved in maritime litigation, promoted the creation of judicial precedents on asset arrests and flag arrests of ships, administrative filings, and other unconventional procedures.
With a strong background and experience in corporate and commercial law, including knowledge of the common law system and comparative law at the LLM level, Mr. Loaiza provides well founded and a thorough range of legal advice, which has extended to complicated insolvency and reorganization proceedings of Panamanian corporations abroad, involving at the same time enforcement of naval mortgages and sale of vessels, overall, including assisting in respect to other type of foreign proceedings, all of which is not the common denominator of most of the shipping lawyers in Panama or elsewhere.
Thus, Mr. Loaiza has been advising clients in the shipping sector and has worked extensively with major ship finance banks, shipping companies and investors, on structured ship financings, construction, acquisitions, litigation and registration of all types of ships, mobile drilling units, FPSOs and other equipment in the shipping and energy sectors; with deep industry knowledge to creatively overcome obstacles and a global perspective on these matters.
Claudio De Castro Co-Heads the firm’s Litigation and Arbitration Practice Group. He specializes in complex arbitration proceedings (international and domestic) and cross-border litigation. Claudio has experience in disputes involving construction, energy, corporate governance, inheritance, waste management (landfills), complex interim measures, Government tenders and State contracts.
He is well-known for his advocacy skills, thorough knowledge of Panamanian legal framework and proceedings, as well as his global, honest risk analysis of complex arbitration or litigation cases.
Claudio developed his international experience working as trainee in the International Arbitration Departments of Shearman & Sterling LLP in Paris (2010) and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in London (2010-2011). He has also participated as an Arbitrator in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot in Vienna.
He is a contributor for the World Bank’s Doing Business Report since 2015 and serves as Ambassador for the Arbitration Academy since 2013. He serves as an adviser to the Executive Committee of the Panama Young Arbitrators – PANYARB (2022-present). Between 2022-2024, Claudio was appointed ICC Panama Delegate to the ICC Global Commission on Arbitration & ADR.
