Area Of Focus

Islamic Finance

Our Doha, Dubai, and London offices lead our global Islamic Finance practice, and we work closely with other offices, including Hong Kong and San Francisco, and other practice areas including real estate and financial services.

We advise principally on English, United Arab Emirates, Qatari, Dubai International Financial Centre and Qatar Financial Centre law as they touch Shari’a-compliant transactions and structures, and we work with other counsel to advise on local law issues in many countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain, and Kuwait. We provide international and regional clients advice on local law security issues and have established a strong international trustee/agency practice as a result of acting on secured financings requiring agents for the banks in local jurisdictions.

We have strong debt capital markets and structured products capabilities, both internationally and regionally, and have developed innovative structures for clients facilitating access to the local equities and asset-based markets and mitigating foreign ownership restrictions and local law issues.

In the real estate sector, we build on our strong real estate finance practice in London to provide advice to banks and investors looking to structure Shari’a-compliant whole facilities or tranches of facilities.

We combine skills across the whole cycle of Islamic finance transactions. Our Islamic Finance group works hand-in-hand with our experienced Corporate and Finance lawyers based in the Persian Gulf, and apply their significant regional, European, United States, and international experience to a broad range of corporate, commercial, and regulatory activities including mergers, acquisitions and disposals (both public and private), joint ventures, equity capital markets, corporate restructurings, private equity, funds, and regulatory matters. Regulatory matters include advising on product development, prudential and supervisory guidance for Islamic finance institutions, product marketing and distribution, and advising in connection with regulatory approvals for new institutions. We can service structures that have regulatory requirements regardless of their location, from our offices in the Middle East, Europe, or the United States.

We regularly provide a one-stop solution for clients who are looking for legal and Shari’a advice on new products and documentation. We work with a number of Shari’a scholars based in different jurisdictions, who are able to provide Shari’a law guidance, input, and ultimately fatawa for clients across a number of schools of thought in Islamic jurisprudence.