Erica Marshall-Forde

Practice Areas

Banking and Finance, Employment and Labour, Hospitality and Leisure, Real Estate, Trusts, Estates and Wealth Preservation

Career

Erica Marshall-Forde is Regional Head of Property and Real Estate with oversight of the Firm’s 13-jurisdiction Pan-Caribbean Real Estate practice. As co-leader of the firm’s Infrastructure and PPP sector group, she also advises on both public and private projects, including major waterfront infrastructural development transactions across the region.

Supporting clients in the dynamic discipline of zoning and planning, Erica advises on some of the region’s more complex transactions with the capabilities to proactively address a diverse range of concerns, including construction, land use, infrastructure development, environmental assessments, and climate change strategies.

Erica’s knowledge of local and regional know-how combined with her extensive experience working with leading market participants allow clients benefit from her broad perspective on market conditions and developments.

As head of the Caribbean-wide Employment and Labour practice, she instructs over eleven teams providing regional businesses and multinationals with coordinated solutions to all their employment and labour needs. Erica extensively advises general counsels in connection with contract and employee handbook reviews, pensions and benefits, related litigation, corporate and governmental investigations, executive compensation, immigration, and HR and counseling projects.

She is regularly engaged to offer strategic guidance on the confines of the law and employer obligations in large-scale layoffs, redundancies and restructuring exercises resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and in relation to divestures, bankruptcy and insolvency, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Erica recently led tense union negotiations in Grenada following a labour impasse resulting from a highly publicized banking acquisition.

Professional Memberships

Barrister, Middle Temple of England and Wales, 2012

Accredited Mediator (Civil and Commercial)-ADR Group, 2012

Barbados Bar Association

Barbados International Business Association

Experience

GNB Financial Group Ltd.: Counsel on employment and real estate matters in client’s potential purchase of the majority shareholding in FirstCaribbean International Bank Limited.

Polcom Developments: Advising European based development company on the acquisition of existing hotel property in Barbados with development and transition into a luxury resort.

Rockley Luxury Resorts: Acting for the purchaser, a luxury villa developer, to acquire three parcels of property, which would be transformed into villas, townhouses, and condominiums in a private golfing community for personal use and holiday rental.

Global Port Holdings: Advising client, the world’s largest cruise port operator, on the Pier 6 project, a project for the redevelopment of the Barbados cruise ship port.

Canadian based hotel and resort: Counsel to company expanding throughout the Caribbean in all phases including project finance, planning and restructuring of personnel.

Ericsson: Counsel throughout the Caribbean on the preparation and negotiation of employment agreements, compliance with employment and labor laws and severance negotiations.

Scotiabank: Advising client on the implications of terminating employee pension plans following the sale of its businesses in the Eastern Caribbean.

Virgin Atlantic: Counsel in severance settlement and related labor mediation arising from employee dismissal in Antigua and Barbuda.

SMP Partners: Advising client on the severance implications flowing from its acquisition of RBC’s trust services arm in Barbados its related consultations with the Labor Department.

Confidential client: Representation in the pending acquisition of three hotels in Antigua and Barbuda and St. Lucia.

Confidential multinational energy client: Counsel in the client’s acquisition of an asset in Trinidad and Tobago on employees transfer steps, severance implications and trade union consultations.

Confidential credit card client: Advising on compliance with employment and labor laws in lieu of setup of operations in Trinidad and Tobago.

Expert in these Jurisdictions

Antigua and Barbuda

Barbados

England and Wales

Grenada

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

St. Kitts and Nevis

Languages Spoken

English

Education

Awards