Our Dubai office provides advice on the core practice areas of Herbert Smith: finance, corporate, dispute resolution, energy and infrastructure and real estate. We have market leading specialist expertise in Islamic finance, private equity and investment funds. The office is the focus for our work with clients throughout the Middle East and with practitioners also experienced in work in Europe, Africa, India, Pakistan, Australasia, Asia and North America, we are ideally equipped to work with locally based clients investing in all these jurisdictions.
In early 2008 we opened an office in Abu Dhabi and our Middle East network is further strengthened by the establishment of a formal and exclusive association in Saudi Arabia with the Al-Ghazzawi Professional Association, one of the Kingdom's largest and leading law firms with offices in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam.
Headed by Neil Brimson, previously head of the firm's Paris projects group, we have a team of more than 60 lawyers (including 13 partners) in the region.
Our Middle East offices work closely with offices across the firm's international network, our Alliance firms Gleiss Lutz and Stibbe and our network of relationship firms across the rest of the world to provide a first class seamless cross-border service to our international and regional clients.
The main practice areas of the office are:
Corporate finance
Dispute resolution
Finance
Projects
Real Estate
Publications
Please click on the links below to read our pdf country factsheets
English versions
Japanese versions
Please click on the links below to see an extract from our Investment guides, which are also available in Japanese.
If you would like receive full versions of the guides please email Susana Majid.
Accolades
“The number one firm for investment funds in the UAE”
PLC – Investment Funds and leading lawyers worldwide 2008
“'A quality outfit that is taking this market seriously' this firm has entered the UAE and raised the stakes of this market tremendously” Chambers Global 2008
Credentials
- BNP Paribas on the first ECA-covered Islamic financing in Jordan, a US$120 million package designed for the financing of the Al Qatrana project developed by Arabian Cement Company (a listed company in Saudi Arabia)
- EFG-Hermes in relation to its US$1 billion MEDA Fund
- Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) on its international acquisitions
- Investcorp Gulf Opportunity Fund on the acquisition of a minority stake in Gulf Cryo, a leading industrial company based in Kuwait; the acquisition of a majority stake in L'Azurde, the world's fourth largest gold and jewellery manufacturer headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and the acquisition of minority stakes in Redington Gulf, one of the leading distributor and service provider of IT and Telecom products in the Middle East
- Jumeirah Capital and Iskandar Investment Berhad (Khazanah Group) on the first phase of the master plan development of the Iskandar region of Malaysia. The total area of the development is approximately three times the size of Singapore
- a major international bank on a new office building development on Business Bay, Dubai
- Millennium Finance Corporation on its role as Joint Global Coordinator for the US$4.96 billion DP World IPO, the largest IPO ever in the Middle East
- Sumitomo Chemical on the development and financing of the US$9.8 billion Rabigh refinery expansion and petrochemical project in Saudi Arabia
- a syndicate of hedge funds comprising emerging market funds and hedge funds on a groundbreaking project financing of a US$216 million zinc oxide mine in Yemen - the first project finance transaction to close in Yemen
- TDIC on its pre-letting programmes for its new HQ office building and three further resorts in Abu Dhabi