Gary Born

Chair of the International Arbitration Practice Group at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP

Gary Born, Chair of the International Arbitration Practice Group at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, is one of the world’s preeminent authorities on international commercial arbitration and international litigation. He has served as counsel in over 650 arbitrations, including several of the most prominent arbitrations in ICC and ad hoc history. He has sat as an arbitrator in over 200 institutional and ad hoc arbitrations.

Mr Born is the President of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) Court of Arbitration and serves in an advisory capacity in other institutions worldwide.

He is a member of the American Law Institute and the Board of Trustees of the British Institute for International and Comparative Law. He has served on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, the Advisory Committee of the ALI’s Restatement of US International Arbitration Law, the Advisory Committee of the ALI Restatement of US Foreign Relation Law (Fourth) and as co-chair of the ABA International Section, Committee on International Aspects of Litigation.

Mohinderpal Sethi

Barrister and Head of Employment, Littleton Chambers

Mohinderpal Sethi is ranked in the top 10 by Chambers & Partners, Legal 500 and Who’s Who Legal and was shortlisted for Employment Junior of the Year at the Chambers UK Bar Awards 2016.

His expertise spans the full range of com­mercial and employment disputes in the DIFC Court of First Instance and Court of Appeal. He appeared in the first ever DIFC injunction application. He has considerable experience of injunctions and speedy trials to enforce directors’ and fiduciaries’ duties, restrictive covenants, trade secrets and confidentiality, database rights, garden leave and economic torts (often involving team moves).

His clients include investment banks, private equity firms, hedge funds, inter-dealer brokers, insurance brokers, senior executives and equity partners. He “frequently acts for some of the biggest clients in the financial services industry. He specialises in complex international business protection litigation in the context of restraint of trade and team moves. Very impressive, he is highly intelligent, quick, commercially astute and responsive to clients. He is very comfortable in dealing with clients and impresses them.” (Chambers & Partners 2017).

Helga Breen

Head of Employment (UK), DWF

Helga has specialised in employment law for more than 30 years.  She has particular expertise in advising on complex cross border and domestic HR projects (including redundancy and change programmes); regulatory investigations and inquiries; disputes and litigation; mergers and acquisitions; business transfers and outsourcing; boardroom disputes; and executive compensation and employee benefits. Helga advises clients across all sectors. Helga was the lead adviser on a number of high profile business start-ups and restructurings, all of which involved legal and commercial advice on a wide range of complex issues including TUPE and other means of transferring people from one employer to another, collective redundancies, harmonising terms and conditions, pensions and employee benefits, employment relations and collective consultation with TUs and employee representatives.

Helga has strong credentials in conducting internal and external inquiries, investigations and compliance audits and has acted as an independent expert in both the private and public sector.  Helga led the high profile investigation on behalf of the British Bankers’ Association (now part of UK Finance) into the alleged manipulation of Libor by a number of major banks. She has undertaken several major investigations for a national body in the health service including a 12 week inquiry into a security breach in the context of a long running and high profile industrial disputes.

Haytham Alieh

Partner at DWF

Haytham is a Litigation Partner at DWF Middle East and is a central point of contact for all litigation related matters. Prior to joining DWF, Haytham was Counsel and Sector Leader of the Litigation Department in Baker & McKenzie.Habib Al Mulla’s Abu Dhabi office. Haytham is an experienced lawyer and legal counselor and has over 21 years’ experience in the Middle East, Haytham has extensive wide-ranging experience specializing in litigation across a variety of sectors and he is a registered Lawyer and member of the Beirut Bar Association in Lebanon since 1996.

Haytham has in-depth experience in civil, criminal, banking, real estate, transportation and commercial law in a contentious and advisory capacity and is an expert in drafting and reviewing complex commercial documentation and has advised several national authorities, he has also participated in amending and drafting several UAE laws and regulations.

Haytham has co-authored five legal books regarding business, commercial and criminal laws and their interpretation and implantation in the Middle East, he has also published several articles on new laws that were introduced in the UAE. He also specializes in the enforcement of the arbitral awards within the UAE courts.

Dr Hamid Harasani

Hamid is the co-founder of Harasani & Alkhamees Law Firm. He is a Saudi qualified lawyer with extensive experience in litigation, corporate, employment and private client law.

Hamid holds a Shariah law degree from the Islamic University in Madinah, a Graduate Diploma in Law from BPP Law School, a Legal Practice Certificate from BPP Law School, an LL.M from McGill University, and a PhD in law from King’s College London.

Hamid has extensive experience in both contentious and non-contentious employment work including drafting contracts and policies to ensure alignment with Saudi labour laws and regulations, assisting key clients with restructuring their workforce with minimal impact, and representing both employers and employees at various levels of the Saudi employment tribunals.

Munir Suboh

Partner at BSA

Munir joined BSA Ahmad Bin Hezeem & Associates LLP in 2018 as a Partner and Head of the Intellectual Property Department, based in our Dubai office. He began his practice in the Middle East since 2006 and has worked on numerous scopes of IP contentious and non-contentious works, including trademarks, trade names, copyrights, patents, trade secrets, domain names and others. He also worked on commercialization and complex disputes of IP rights.

Munir has been advising high net clients in setting up regional strategies for protection of IP rights on the prosecution, protection, transactional and enforcement. Munir represents a range of clients from various industry sectors, including Media, FMCG, Tobacco, industrial, pharmaceuticals and many more. His principal set of expertise encompasses negotiations, settlement mandates and litigation. He has successfully resolved critical commercial disputes related to media, technology and IP deals. He has extensive experience in regulatory works and has experience in consulting clients on consumer protection, antitrust and competition law.

Magdalena Konig

Magdalena is an experienced commercial, technology and outsourcing lawyer. She has acted for a range of private and public sector clients and has particular experience in the automotive, franchise and ICT industry. She has advised on multiple multifaceted business and IT transformation projects. She also has vast in-house experience, having completed secondments with Jaguar Land Rover, PSA Peugeot Citroen, British American Tobacco, Compass Group and Informa PLC.

Today, working at a well known UAE conglomerate, she advises the group and its diverse business units. She focusses on complex UAE, pan-GCC and international franchising and IT projects.

Thamer Ibrahim Arab

CEO, Dhaman Hospitals

THAMER IBRAHIM ARAB is the CEO of the Health Assurance Hospitals Company (DHAMAN). He has fulfilled this role since October 2021. He has held several leadership executive positions and board memberships in significant institutions with a career of over 25 years. His career includes accomplishing tangible achievements in large banking, insurance and aviation institutions. Thamer holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from California State University and several specialised training programs in many areas, such as leadership, strategy, economics, and operations.

Joanne Fischlin

Joanne is an experienced counsel with both private practice and in-house backgrounds. She is admitted to the Geneva Bar and a candidate to become a Solicitor of England and Wales.

During her career, Joanne held various senior legal management positions in different industries

including Retail, Manufacturing, FSI and now Technology. She worked and advised on a large number of opportunities and issues across EMEA and LATAM, allowing her to build extensive knowledge in multiple areas of the law across jurisdictions. With experience in the management of large litigation portfolios and several board assignments, she also has strong capabilities in risk management, governance and compliance.

Today, Joanne leads the Corporate, External and Legal Affairs team at Microsoft for the Gulf region, helping companies on their digital transformation journey and supporting regulators in their efforts to embrace technology with best in class governance and compliance in mind.