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OCTOBER 2013
Legal Focus
75 Corporate Law
This month we take a look at corporate law by speaking to Daniel Wood, a Partner with Walkers' Dubai office. Walkers is an offshore law firm advising on the laws of the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Jersey and Ireland. The firm has offices in these locations, as well as in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and of course Dubai.
Please introduce yourself and your role.
Our business model is professionally managed and partner
led, with a deep bench of
transactional partners, senior counsel and associates across our key practice areas of: Investment Funds, Finance, Corporate, Structured Products & Capital Markets,
Corporate Recovery, Private Equity and Islamic Finance.
The Dubai office of Walkers advises on the laws of the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands (BVI) for clients in the GCC/MENA region. Our principal practice areas are Finance (both conventional and Islamic), Investment Funds and Corporate and we generally act alongside international or local legal counsel whenever there is an offshore element to a transaction.
On the Finance side, we act for a large majority of the banks in the region whenever they are lending into a structure that has a Cayman Islands and/or BVI element.
We advise many of the region's leading asset managers, including Sovereign Wealth Funds, across a broad range of Investment Funds matters. The lawyers in our Dubai office have specialist experience in all types of investment funds, including private equity funds, hedge funds and Islamic funds.
I joined Walkers in late 2007 and have worked in the Dubai office to date, becoming a Partner in May 2012. Before joining Walkers, I worked in the Dubai office of an international onshore law firm, advising on various corporate matters, and prior to that was with a corporate law firm in Western Australia, advising on corporate and commercial matters, specialising in capital raisings, IPOs and listings.
The Walkers' Dubai office has seen steady growth Insolvency &
over the past year through the consolidation of existing relationships with key clients, and also an expansion of our client base thanks to a number of successful pitch wins for new business. Regionally we have expanded further and regularly act for the leading players in the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
What are your key practice areas and what key deals have you been involved in recently?
Walkers is internationally recognised as having one of the leading offshore Investment Fund practices, advising many of the world's most prominent asset managers, fund promoters and institutional investors. Our innovative and practical approach to solving complex commercial issues has been applied to establishing the full range of structures used in the market and advising on their commercial implications.
Our Corporate and Finance practice covers the full range of corporate, finance and banking activities including lending, acquisition finance and capital markets work.
Walkers' Islamic Finance Group is based in our Dubai office. We are considered one of the leading practices in our understanding of the principles and issues of Islamic finance as applied to offshore structures. Our Dubai office advises many of the leading Islamic and Non-Islamic financial institutions, Banks and Sovereign Wealth Funds in the development of Islamic-compliant financial and investment products.
Walkers has been fortunate to have acted on some extremely high profile and innovative matters in Dubai over the past year. By way of example, in April this year we acted as Cayman Islands counsel to the Saudi Electricity Company in relation to the US$1 billion Saudi Electricity Company sukuk issued through Saudi Electricity
Global SUKUK Company 2 (the Cayman issuer vehicle) with Deutsche Bank AG and HSBC Bank plc as joint lead managers.
We also advised Emirates Airlines on their US$1 billion sukuk issued through Medjool Limited (the Cayman issuer vehicle) with Standard Chartered Bank and Citigroup Global Markets Limited as joint global coordinators. This deal in March 2013 was the most high profile sukuk in the previous year.
Walkers’ Dubai office, led by Managing Partner Tim Buckley, acted as sole Cayman Islands counsel to the purchaser consortium of Mubadala Development Company PJSC, Sony Corporation of America, the Blackstone Group's GSO Capital Partners LP, David Geffen and the other members of an investor consortium that acquired EMI Music Publishing in a US$2.2bn transaction. Walkers advised the consortium on all aspects of Cayman Islands law including the joint venture formation and structuring, documentation, execution and completion aspects of the transaction. LM
contact:
daniel Wood Partner – Walkers 5th Floor, the Exchange Building Po Box 506513, dIFc dubai United arab Emirates
tel: +971 4 363 7912 Email: daniel.wood@walkersglobal.com www.walkersglobal.com