Architects Of Trust: Freshfields

Freshfields combines a UAE transactional practice with international arbitration experience, advising on how commercial relationships are formed and on the disagreements that can test them.

Salik. Parkin. Anghami. Two of them offer services that are part of everyday urban life; the third sits in the region’s media economy. All three appear on Freshfields’ list of UAE mandates, and between them they show what changes when a business takes on new owners.

Start with the listings. Freshfields advised Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority on the listings of Salik and Parkin on the Dubai Financial Market. The moment a company enters the public markets, it has a new audience to answer to: investors who need to understand the business, its risks and the rights attached to their capital. A listing wraps a new ownership and disclosure framework around the underlying operation, so the advisory task covers the commercial story as well as the documents investors use to assess it. Here, the transaction is just the start of a much longer relationship between an organi zation and its shareholders.

With offices in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the firm names inbound and outbound investment as a central part of its work. And that work reaches into media too: Freshfields advised OSN+ on the acquisition of a majority stake in Anghami. Corporate advice, in other words, follows investment into sectors where content, technology and changing consumer behavior shape the business being bought.

That said, deals are only half the picture. Sami Tannous, Regional Managing Partner for MENA at Freshfields, is a partner in the international arbitration group. Based in Dubai since 2012, he handles commercial and investor state arbitration, including disagreements arising from shareholder arrange-ments, joint ventures and production-sharing agreements.

Transactions and disputes are two views of the same relationship. At the outset, parties negotiate what they expect to contribute and receive. When circumstances change, the meaning of those commitments can become contested. Arbitration experience brings that second stage into view, without making disagreement inevitable or pretending any contract can anticipate every event.

For founders considering a listing or a stake sale, the possibility of a later dispute deserves attention while the agreement is still being negotiated. At Freshfields, the same firm that helps sign the agreement knows what it looks like when it is challenged.