Rezart Spahia is a founding member and managing partner of Frost & Fire Consulting. Primarily a lawyer by training and experience, he has advised international and local clients on a broad range of corporate transactions for close to twenty years.

Prior to founding Frost & Fire Consulting, Mr. Spahia spent almost a decade as a corporate finance lawyer with the premiere American law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, in its New York and London offices. While at Cravath, Mr. Spahia worked with clients across industries in several of practice area groups: (i) the mergers and acquisition practice group, assisting sellers and buyers with acquisitions, dispositions and investments; (ii) the underwriting practice group, assisting underwriters and issuers with IPOs and other securities offerings; (iii) the private equity practice group, assisting investors with strategic acquisitions and investments (including real estate); (iv) the banking practice group, assisting banking clients with setting up credit facilities; (v) the London office group, working with international clients on various cross-border transactions; and (vi) the general corporate practice group, advising corporate clients’ boards on a broad array of corporate governance best practices. Representative clients included IBM, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Time Warner Inc., AOL, Goldman Sachs, WebMD Health Corporation, Manpower Inc., Credit Suisse, Aramark Corporation, Readers Digest, Banco Santander, Grupo Modelo, Ripplewood Holdings, Lindsay Goldberg, On Semiconductor Corporation, Enel Group, etc.

Since returning to Albania and founding Frost & Fire Consulting, Mr. Spahia has assisted many of the most important Albanian businesses and international clients with their corporate and project financing matters.  He has structured ventures and investments across various industries, assisting landowners and developers with real estate transactions, advising tourism and energy sector clients, and guiding promising start ups. Mr. Spahia has been ranked as a Leading Individual in the Legal 500 and a Highly Regarded Lawyer for Corporate, M&A and Project Finance from IFLR 1000. Further, Mr. Spahia has served on the board of various not-for-profits, including the board of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT/AUK) in Kosova, the Ivanaj Foundations, the Albanian Heritage Foundation, the Albanian Karate Federation etc.  He also is a member of Albania’s High Council of Sports. Mr. Spahia was born in Tirana, Albania. He received a B.A. in history, as class valedictorian from the University of Tirana, and was awarded the Gold Medal from the Albanian Ministry of Education (its highest academic honor of the time). In 2000, Mr. Spahia graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College, where he was elected to the Cornelius Honor Society and Phi Delta Phi International Legal Honor Society based on superior scholarship and leadership. Mr. Spahia was the only student in the school’s history to graduate with two specialty certificates in Business Law and Environmental Law. Following his JD studies, Mr. Spahia received a Master of Laws (L.L.M.) degree in International Legal Studies, concentrating on international economic law, from New York University School of Law, where he graduated with magna cum laude GPA equivalent.  At NYU Law, he was a graduate editor of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics. Prior to his legal studies, Mr. Spahia was an underwater archaeologist at the Academy of Sciences in Albania and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University.  He is an longtime martial arts practitioner, holding black belts in both karate and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Mr. Spahia is admitted to practice in New York and is member of the New York City Bar Association. He may be reached by phone at +355 4 450 0230 or by email at [email protected].