Alexandre Riou

Alexandre Riou is a Founding Partner at 186 AVOCATS, manages the firm’s London office and is a director of 186 London Limited. He works with entrepreneurs, shareholders, investors and companies whose French legal matters need to be understood in an international commercial context.

His corporate work follows a business from formation and early capital through growth, reorganisation and exit. He advises on seed investment, Series A and Series B rounds, shareholder arrangements, acquisitions, external growth, restructuring and disposals. This gives him a practical view of how French company law affects ownership, governance and the timing of a wider transaction.

For UK and international stakeholders, Alexandre connects the French legal workstream with the commercial timetable and the work of English counsel, accountants and other advisers. He helps decision-makers understand which points are governed by French law, which documents need local treatment and where a cross-border structure may create additional risk.

Alexandre also represents clients before the French civil and commercial courts. His contentious work includes shareholder disputes, contractual claims, unfair competition, commercial disagreements, insolvency proceedings and business criminal-law matters. The combination of advisory and litigation experience helps him assess both the intended transaction and the disputes that can arise from it.

His practice also extends to complex inheritance disputes and art-market matters. These assignments can bring together ownership, valuation, family, commercial and international questions that do not sit neatly within one legal category.

Before joining 186 AVOCATS as a partner in 2018, Alexandre worked at Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Gondran de Robert. He studied business and tax law at Paris II Panthéon-Assas, completed an LLM at New York University School of Law and studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is registered with the Nantes and New York Bars.