Verna E. Cuthbert

Partner

Having practiced for more than 30 years in Ontario and Quebec, Verna Cuthbert has extensive experience as a commercial law lawyer. Her practice extends to many areas of business law but with particular emphasis on lending transactions, commercial joint ventures, real estate development and financing, acquisitions and dispositions, and mining law. She represents institutional lenders, developers, technology and mining companies. Her clients include the largest technology research park in Canada and its institutional partners (major pension funds and insurance companies). This work includes all aspects of land development, leasing and financing, commercial contracts and management agreements. She also acts as counsel to Quebec's public pension fund in a number of multi-million dollar financings in several provinces and represents it in construction and permanent financing for office complexes, commercial projects, industrial properties, multi-residential and retirement homes. She also has acted for, and continues to represent, an international major mining company as the majority co-owner in a multi-million dollar commercial project advising on all matters of the project, including the joint venture agreement, licensing technology, land assembly, user agreements, supply contracts and leases.

In her practice, she is regularly called upon to represent Canadian companies in their dealings on the international scene including China, Europe and Australia. She is also active in representing a number of foreign companies in commercial activities in Canada. She has participated in trade missions both for Canada and the Province of Quebec in Europe and South America. She has served for a number of years as the regional representative of the Global Mining Group for the Montreal office and is an active member in the Asian Pacific Practice Group and the Real Estate Practice Group.

Because of her unique experience in both the civil and common law jurisdictions of Canada, being both a partner based in the Montreal office and having practiced in Toronto for a number of years, Verna brings to her clients' transactions not only expertise in the two different legal systems but also a common sense approach. She is a deal maker, her aim being to complete the transaction successfully. In her opinion maintaining a sense of decorum and a sense of humour are absolute musts in today's high-pressure situations.