Sam Black divides his practice between the international and domestic arenas. He is involved extensively in the design of multinational financing structures including investments in the new market economy countries. He works regularly with international organizations and governments on issues arising under various treaties and the charters of the multilateral agencies. Mr. Black has assisted in advocacy in tax and other treaty negotiations, and provided audit defense and tax and corporate planning and counseling worldwide. He is an authority on equipment leasing in US and cross-border markets.

He has led, designed and negotiated transit and urban redevelopment financings for state and local governments, and counseled nonprofit organizations on governance, for-profit subsidiaries, legislative programs, industry standard-setting, tax issues and tax exempt finance. Mr. Black is chair of the Washington Smart Growth Alliance, which promotes conservation and sustainable development in the National Capital Region, and served as president of the Business Transportation Action Coalition, supporting the region’s metro transit system.

Mr. Black has lectured regularly in law school courses on international taxation and has testified, written and spoken on many issues in tax practice and policy. He is a past chair of the VAT Committee of the American Bar Association. In Washington DC he has also served as the chair of the Steering Committee, Taxation Division, DC Bar, president of Lowell School and chair of the Latino Student Fund. Mr. Black is recognized in Who’s Who in American Law, Eighth Edition.

Representative Experience

• Designing, negotiating and implementing numerous investments and joint ventures in Russia, both for Western and Russia-based clients, with a concentration in the space and high technology sectors.
• Negotiating, with opposing environmental and business organizations in the mid-Atlantic region, procedures for evaluating environmental impacts of large-scale development projects; implementing these procedures with unanimous agreement.
• Designing and documenting, for one of the largest US-based banks, a unique Islamic financing structure for a portfolio of rated equipment leases.
• Designing the tax and international structure for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s first investment fund for newly privatized companies in the Czech and Slovak Republics.
• Negotiating a three-state business community’s support for air quality improvements (NOx and VOC reductions), the first unified business position one of the region’s biggest environmental issues.