01
Where to invest, establish or expand?
Country, market, regional base, and legal, tax, institutional, financial and geopolitical conditions.
International Legal Strategy
Clarify the decision.Structure the action.
From law to impact.
RoAnn designs international legal architectures when the intended outcome depends on several legal orders, institutions, actors or operating environments. RoAnn starts from the decision to be made, compares possible trajectories and organises implementation. The objective: a legally sound architecture that works today, remains robust and can adapt over time.
01Understand→02Decide→03Act→04Adapt
Areas of intervention
Europe ↔ Africa · Europe ↔ Europe · Africa ↔ Africa
Your decisions
What decision do you need to make?
02
How to enter the market and structure the operation?
Subsidiary, distribution, joint venture, acquisition, partnership, tax structuring and governance.
03
Who to work with?
Ownership, capabilities, interests, reputation, governance, alignment of interests and contractual terms.
04
How to secure funds, assets and flows?
Financing, payments, guarantees, taxation of flows, foreign exchange, dividends, repatriation and enforcement.
05
What could shift the balance?
Regulation, institutions, geopolitics, taxation, foreign exchange, enforcement and partners.
06
What if the situation stalls or you need to exit?
Negotiate, restructure, recover, arbitrate, litigate, change partner or organise an exit.
Independent legal assessment
You already have legal advice, but doubts remain?
An unfamiliar foreign procedure, a local counsel’s analysis that is difficult to reconcile with your own legal system or legal culture, divergent views, court proceedings or international arbitration: RoAnn provides an independent assessment, tests the reasoning against the relevant sources and evaluates its implications for the decision.
RoAnn does not replace locally qualified counsel where their involvement is required. Its role is to test the analysis, facilitate understanding across legal systems and clarify its implications for the decision.
Request an independent review
Targeted intervention on a defined question.
Core capability · Legal intelligence
See what the legal file alone does not show.
Legal intelligence is neither a standalone service nor a simple monitoring function. It is a core capability: detecting, qualifying, connecting and interpreting factors that can alter a trajectory and, with it, the decision. RoAnn brings together law, taxation, institutions, actors, assets, flows, finance, geopolitics, context and local realities.
Law, tax & regulation
What is permitted, required, enforceable, negotiable, structurally possible or protectable, and how the relevant rules and sources interact.
Institutions & governance
Who decides, under what powers, procedures, practices and timelines.
Actors, interests & power dynamics
Who decides, influences, finances, executes, enables or can block the trajectory, and with what interests.
Finance, economics & assets
How financing, assets, guarantees, flows, foreign exchange and taxation condition feasibility and enforcement.
Geopolitics & country context
Political, regulatory, institutional, sectoral or geopolitical developments that may alter the strategy.
Local realities & effectiveness
How the formal framework actually operates in the relevant context, practice and legal culture.
Capabilities deployed depending on the matter: open-source intelligence (OSINT) · human-source intelligence (HUMINT) · corporate and asset intelligence · stakeholder intelligence · country, geopolitical and sector intelligence · specialised investigation within the applicable legal framework.
International Legal Strategy
Design robust and adaptive legal architectures.
For RoAnn, International Legal Strategy is neither the juxtaposition of national answers nor a solution frozen at a single point in time. It means designing a coherent architecture across legal orders, institutions and actors, testing it against several scenarios, and preserving its capacity to adapt as rules, power dynamics or enforcement conditions change.
01
Trajectory
Object. Understand the evolving configuration of a situation, relationship, transaction or right across legal, institutional, relational and economic spaces.
02
Effectiveness
Core question. Identify the conditions under which a legal possibility produces its intended effects, loses them, changes them or must be redirected.
03
Strategy
Mode of intervention. Design and compare several architectures, sequence actions, coordinate contributions and organise implementation.
04
Responsibility
Guiding criterion. Determine which effects to pursue, for whose benefit, with what dependencies, limits, risks and acceptable consequences.
An architecture designed for change over time
01AnticipateIdentify plausible scenarios and tipping points.
→
02TestTest the architecture against changes in rules, actors, financing or context.
→
03PreservePreserve options, room for manoeuvre and exit mechanisms.
→
04AdaptRevise the architecture without losing coherence or the strategic objective.
Working method: Define · Map · Compare · Design · Test · Implement · Reassess. The analysis distinguishes what is established, interpreted, hypothetical or uncertain and identifies events that should trigger reassessment.
Areas of intervention
Connect systems. Master interfaces.
RoAnn works where a decision, transaction or dispute requires several legal orders, institutions and on-the-ground realities to be connected. Its natural terrain is the interface: between Europe and Africa, between European systems, and between African jurisdictions.
↔
Europe ↔ Africa
Central corridor: investments, establishment, partnerships, contracts, taxation, financing, disputes, enforcement and other operations connecting the two regions, in both directions.
↔
Europe ↔ Europe
Multi-jurisdictional strategies and architectures: comparison of legal and regulatory routes, choice of jurisdiction, cross-border structuring and coordination of several European legal orders, including beyond the European Union.
↔
Africa ↔ Africa
Regional expansion, investments, governance, disputes and operations involving several African legal orders, within or outside the OHADA area.
Our preferred legal anchors – European Union law and OHADA law – are strengths of our practice, not its boundaries.
Founders
Two complementary trajectories. One shared requirement: effectiveness.
Across Europe and Africa, RoAnn combines experience from private practice, business, governance, OHADA law, European law, cross-border tax and arbitration.
Founding Partner & Managing Director · International Legal Consultant
Dr Anne-Sophie Firion
A lawyer admitted to the Paris and Madrid Bars since 2005 and 2007 respectively, a PhD in Public International Law and an international arbitrator, Anne-Sophie Firion advises on international legal strategy, international economic law, European Union law, OHADA law, Spanish business law and international arbitration. After experience with leading international law firms, she developed an independent practice. Her background also includes eight years of university teaching in Paris and Madrid, together with research activities. She also practises international law independently under the FIRION brand.
Background: Paris & Madrid Bars · PhD in Public International Law · European Union law · OHADA · international arbitration · eight years of university teaching.
Founding Partner · Corporate Legal Counsel
Rokhaya Gueye Diagne
A corporate legal professional with more than thirty-two years of experience, she spent twenty-two years at SONATEL, including twelve as Director of Regulatory and Legal Affairs. She led teams involved in the group’s international development across West Africa and helped structure its governance. This experience involved legal, regulatory and governance issues in cross-border projects. Her practice includes corporate law, corporate governance in the OHADA region and arbitration. She also serves as an arbitrator, including before the OHADA CCJA.
Background: Dakar · West Africa · governance · international development · OHADA · arbitration.
Law firms · Legal departments · Institutions
Coordinate without diluting responsibility.
An international strategy may involve several advisers, experts, institutions and intelligence sources. RoAnn does not seek to replace them: it defines the strategic framework, organises how they fit together and preserves coherence around the client’s decision.
For law firms & legal departments
Does a matter raise an issue outside your usual legal system? Do you want to test a local analysis, coordinate several advisers or obtain a cross-cutting view before recommending a strategy? RoAnn can intervene on a defined scope, alongside lead counsel.
For institutions & business organisations
Do you support companies in their international expansion or need to understand the obstacles they face along a corridor, in a market or sector? RoAnn can design diagnostics, comparative analyses, pilot schemes and decision-support tools.
RoAnn ecosystem
An ecosystem built around International Legal Strategy.
RoAnn designs, compares and implements international legal architectures. Around this core practice, Circles convenes the right expertise, Lab develops the framework and method, and Academy transfers them.
RoAnn
Design · Compare · Implement
International Legal Strategy
Design, compare and implement coherent, effective, robust and adaptive international legal architectures.
From law to impact.
RoAnn Circles
Convene
Bring expertise together. Assemble the right team.
For each engagement, RoAnn brings together the legal, economic, financial, institutional, sectoral or geopolitical expertise the strategy requires. Professionals joining the Circles are selected and qualified under the criteria of Label RoAnn.
RoAnn Lab
Think
Anticipate change. Stress-test architectures. Evolve the method.
RoAnn Lab is the research, foresight and methodological development space for International Legal Strategy. It examines trajectories, effectiveness, scenarios, robustness, adaptability, legal intelligence and the execution conditions of international legal architectures.
RoAnn Academy
Transfer
Turn method into capacity for action.
RoAnn Academy transfers the reasoning, tools and methods of International Legal Strategy to those who make, structure or implement international decisions. Training, programmes and tailored formats are designed for legal departments, professionals, organisations and institutions.
Label RoAnn
Select. Validate. Qualify. Reassess.
Label RoAnn is RoAnn’s internal framework for selecting and qualifying professionals eligible to join RoAnn Circles. It considers technical expertise, international experience, integrity, independence, confidentiality, relevant local grounding and the ability to work across disciplines.
Qualification is granted for a defined scope (including jurisdiction, discipline, sector, type of intervention and languages) and is then monitored and reassessed periodically.
Label RoAnn is an internal qualification framework. It does not replace any certification, licence, authorisation or regulated professional title.
Strategic insights
What can change the decision deserves analysis.
RoAnn Insights do not follow legal news for its own sake. They focus on developments and situations that may materially alter an international decision.
International Legal Strategy
A legal architecture is robust only if it can adapt.
Think about the decision over time: scenarios, tipping points, preserved options and mechanisms for redirecting the architecture without losing coherence.
Contracts, flows & enforcement
A right to payment does not always result in payment.
From contract to assets, from currency to the tax treatment of flows: build enforcement into the transaction from the outset.
Independent assessment
When a local procedure seems disconcerting to a foreign client.
How comparing legal orders and legal cultures changes the assessment of an opinion and the strategic decision.
Contact
What are you seeking to achieve?
Your matter involves several countries, jurisdictions, institutions or actors? The legal answer may already exist. The question is how to turn it into a result.