Richard Marcon has practiced mergers and acquisitions, equity transactions, corporate and contract law for more than three decades, more than a decade of them in the Principality of Monaco. He is one of the very few licensed practitioners in Monaco who offer end-to-end support in M&A, on both buy-side and sell-side transactions, from the initial identification of a target through post-transaction integration.
He serves as trusted counsel to a small number of entrepreneurs and ultra-high-net-worth families, in Monaco and internationally, on their businesses, their negotiations, and their investments. He is ranked by Chambers and Partners.
Representation before Monaco’s administrative authorities
In keeping with the firm’s bespoke approach, Marcon & Associés does not practice litigation or represent clients before the courts. Richard Marcon exclusively represents his longstanding clients before Monaco’s administrative authorities: the Financial Activities Supervisory Commission (CCAF) and the Monegasque Financial Security Authority (AMSF), both independent, and the Business Development Agency (DDE).
His view is that litigation is the consequence of a failure, and that nobody truly wins a lawsuit. Most business disputes can be avoided, provided they are anticipated at the negotiation and drafting stage.
Institutional engagement
Richard Marcon is Vice-President of the Association Monégasque des Compliance Officers, where he also chairs the committee for the legal and accounting professions. He has been invited on several occasions by the National Council (Conseil National) of the Principality of Monaco to comment on draft anti-money-laundering legislation, and he regularly advises the Monegasque employers’ federation (FEDEM) on the same subjects as the law evolves.
He previously served as Secretary General of the Monaco Chamber of Legal Advisors and of the Monaco Chamber of Renewable Energies and Ecology.
Teaching
Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po Paris for several years, he taught Thinking Like a Lawyer and Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution in an International Context, a full course he created in 2023 for the Mediterranean and Middle East campus. During that period Sciences Po ranked among the world’s top three institutions for Politics and International Studies in the QS rankings.
On what he was trying to teach: thinking like a lawyer is not knowing what the law says. It is putting legal skill to work for a client’s objective. You have to master the framework, but the skill lies in understanding why it is there.
Before the firm
General Counsel of a global IT company, with board memberships in IT, biotechnology, and oil and gas. He founded a strategy consulting practice in the late 1990s, which is what took him onto boards rather than the other way around. Marcon & Associés grew out of his partnership at Lexwell and was authorized in the Principality in 2013.
In 2024 he was appointed to the board of a Swiss luxury group specializing in premium cigars and caviar, a sector of long-standing personal interest to him.