Architects Of Trust: Clyde & Co

Clyde & Co has spent more than three decades in the Middle East advising on the insurance, transport, construction and aviation risks that sit behind the region’s physical economy.

Clyde & Co has built its regional practice around many of those intersections. Its first Middle Eastern office opened in Dubai in 1989, when Jonathan Silver merged his practice with the firm. Today, its regional presence extends to Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riyadh, Jeddah and Cairo, with insurance, transport, marine trade, energy and infrastructure among its main areas of focus.

Insurance gives that sector coverage a particular edge. The firm advises on policy wording, coverage and claims, alongside the corporate and regulatory questions facing insurers and reinsurers. Its work also covers professional indemnity, directors’ and officers’ liability and cyber insurance. Here, the wording of a contract can decide how an organization responds when a commercial relationship, a professional decision or a digital system comes under pressure.

The link to the physical economy shows up in construction. Among its published matters, Clyde & Co lists representing an airport owner in an AED3 billion arbitration arising from the construction of a new concourse and terminal building in Dubai. The firm doesn’t identify the client or the date. Still, the example shows the scale of contractual exposure that can sit behind an infrastructure asset, long before its value is measured in passenger numbers.

A more recent move came in April 2026, when Bushra Abu-Tayeh joined the Dubai office as an aviation partner. Previously head of aviation at Al Tamimi & Company, she brought experience spanning liability, regulatory advice, private aviation transactions, aircraft leasing and asset enforcement. Her arrival added regional capability across both the operation of aircraft and the legal arrangements governing their ownership and use.

A business rarely experiences risk in neat professional categories. A single disruption can raise questions about contractual performance, insurance cover and regulatory obligations at the same time. For a founder building in these sectors, sector knowledge is useful precisely because it shows how those questions affect one another, and what they mean for the people making operational decisions.

With an aviation partner newly in Dubai and an AED3 billion arbitration among its published matters, Clyde & Co is staying close to the assets businesses build, move and insure: clarifying responsibilities while a venture is planned, and enforcing them when its assumptions are tested.