37 ASIAN LEGAL BUSINESS – MARCH 2024 WWW.LEGALBUSINESSONLINE.COM MIDDLE EAST UK law firm Clyde & Co has announced that it will be moving its regional headquarters to Saudi Arabia, under the country’s Regional Headquarters registration scheme. The firm’s Saudi Arabia office has seven partners and over 30 locally based-attorneys. U.S. law firm Latham & Watkins has also announced that it will be moving its Middle East base to Riyadh. These moves follow a new rule that multinationals must have regional headquarters in Saudi or risk losing lucrative government contracts. UK law firm Stephenson Harwood has upped its shipping and marine capabilities with the addition of a seven-attorney team from Ince & Co in Dubai. This includes Mohamed El Hawawy, who was the joint managing partner of Ince’s Dubai office. El Hawawy will lead the Middle East shipping and insurance practice for SH. Partner Khurram Ali also joins the firm, bringing over two decades of shipping advisory, with specialised knowledge in the UAE and Saudi Arabia markets. SH now has a six-partner marine and shipping team in the Middle East. Energy and life sciences-focused U.S. law firm Baker Botts added partner Alexander Henry to its corporate team Dubai. Henry, who joins from Latham & Watkins, advises clients on space and satellites, digital infrastructure, enterprise IT, outsourcing, fintech and payments. Baker Botts now has 11 partners in the Middle East. Henry’s hire adds depth to the firm’s digital infrastructure capabilities, which is “one of our key tech subsectors,” said Danny David, managing partner of Baker Botts. U.S law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius has expanded its Dubai base with the addition of partner Rebecca Ford from Clyde & Co. Ford will lead the firm’s employment practice in the Middle East, handling contentious and non-contentious matters across the region. She has also overseen workplace investigations and advised on employment law and immigration issues stemming from employment in the Middle East. Morgan Lewis has ten partners in the Middle East across Dubai and Riyadh. Clyde & Co has lost two other partners, Stephen McKenna and Ross Barfoot, to Dentons’ corporate practice in Abu Dhabi. They specialise in cross-border M&A, joint ventures and regulatory advisory. They collectively specialise in aviation, logistics, healthcare, education and hospitality sectors. Dentons now has 18 partners across offices in the UAE in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Additionally, Clyde & Co’s Abu Dhabi dispute resolution head, Richard Bell, has taken his practice to local legal giant Al Tamimi & Company. Bell has over 16 years of experience in dealing with commercial disputes in the Gulf region. He has expertise in disputes arising out of foreign direct investment into the GCC, commercial agency and distribution agreements, shareholder agreements, banking and trade credit matters, real estate developments and commercial leases. CMS has also added a partner in Dubai, hiring the former head of Clifford Chance’s Middle East disputes practice, James Abbott. He specialises in commercial litigation, arbitration, and investigations, with a focus on cross-border banking and financial litigation, including fraud and asset tracing, regulatory investigations, sanctions issues, joint ventures and shareholder disputes. CMS, which launched a Saudi outpost last year, has around 11 partners in the Middle East. In deals, Magic Circle law firm Clifford Chance has advised Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) on the dual issuance of $800 million senior unsecured trust certificates due 2029 and $1.4 billion senior unsecured trust certificates due 2034 by Saudi Electricity Sukuk Programme Company as trustee under its $6 billion Trust Certificate Issuance Programme. The crossborder team comprised partner and head of Middle East capital markets, Stuart Ure (Dubai), with support from head of banking and finance Yasser Al-Hussain (Riyadh). Norton Rose Fulbright has advised Abu Dhabi-based alternative investment manager Lunate Capital on the establishment of the Chimera S&P India Shariah ETF, the region’s first exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking Shariah-compliant Indian equities. The Chimera S&P India Shariah ETF, a physical, in-kind, liquid and fully fungible ETF was listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) on 26 January 2024. The cross-border Norton Rose Fulbright team advising Lunate was led by senior partner Zubair Mir and partner Geoffroy Hermanns. Meanwhile, Bangkok-headquartered law firm Silk Legal has established an office in Dubai that aims to focus on new technologies like fintech, Web3, and artificial intelligence. The new office, Silk Legal’s second overseas outpost after New York, will also provide support to clients on corporate and commercial law. It will be led by Silk Legal’s founder and managing partner, Jason Corbett, along with senior counsel Gabriel Khoury, a former general counsel and head of compliance at the UAE’s SHUAA Capital. The latest partner hires, big-ticket deals, office openings and more. COMPILED BY NIMITT DIXIT MIDDLE EAST NEWS ROUNDUP
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