Dan Partovi

Partner, Jones Day

Dan Partovi has 15 years of experience advising significant companies, private equity and sovereign funds, and government entities on complex international transactions in the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and across the MENA region. His focus includes M&A, joint ventures, international trade, complex commercial relationships, and structuring foreign direct investment into the Middle East.

Dan is experienced in sectors including hospitality, F&B, consumer goods, retail, real estate, financial services, energy, telecommunications, and manufacturing. Representative transactions include: acting for the Saudi Advanced Industries Company in the sale of NPS Bahrain to Fajr Capital (the largest announced private equity transaction in the MENA region in 2014); USG Corporation’s $1.6 billion joint venture with Boral; and advising Cardinal Health on its $1.9 billion cash acquisition of Johnson & Johnson’s Cordis business. Other institutions that Dan has advised include China State Construction Engineering Corporation, Goldman Sachs, Hilton Hotels, LinkedIn, Macquarie Bank, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Orange/France Telecom, Procter & Gamble, Renault, The Riverside Company, SAP, Schneider Electric, Starwood, Toyota, and government institutions of the United Arab Emirates, China, Germany, and France.

Dan is the author of the official commentary to the Companies Law of the Dubai International Financial Centre (published by the DIFC Academy and LexisNexis) and provides the legal community with continuing education on companies law and governance. He has been recognised by The Legal 500 and Chambers for M&A, corporate & commercial, energy, and telecoms media and technology transactions and acknowledged as being able to “really understand the business issues behind the legal documents.”

Dustin Appel

Senior Associate, Baker Botts

Dustin’s practice focuses on commercial litigation and international arbitration, particularly in the energy sector. Drawing on his economics and accounting background, he often works with clients and experts regarding damages modeling and other financial aspects of litigation.

Prior to law school, Dustin worked for several years in Russia and Central Asia in the freight forwarding industry providing logistics services to the energy and mining sectors. Dustin is proficient in written and spoken Russian. Dustin then entered public accounting, where he worked on audit and tax engagements for clients as varied as securities broker-dealers, construction contractors and heavy equipment lessors. He also has experience in industry accounting in the oilfield services sector. Dustin continues to maintain a license as a Certified Public Accountant.

Mark Brown

Partner, Al Tamimi & Company

Mark Brown is a Partner in the Banking and Finance practice in Abu Dhabi.

Mark is a specialist banking and finance lawyer with significant experience advising financial institutions with respect to transactional lending, product development, customer insolvency and legislative change. Mark’s experience also extends to assisting corporate borrowers from a range of industries, debt capital markets transactions and advising on UAE projects.

Peter Manning

Partner, Simmons & Simmons

Peter is a restructuring and special situations partner advising on all aspects of rescues and re-constructions. He has extensive experience in insolvency and corporate re-construction law, both contentious and non-contentious.

He has acted for a broad range of clients, including banks, insolvency practitioners, debtors and creditors. Recently an increased proportion of his work has been advising directors of financially distressed companies.

Peter has been ranked as a leading practitioner by Chambers every year since 2003.

Habib Motani

Consultant, Clifford Chance

Habib Motani is a leading international financial markets lawyer, with particular expertise in relation to derivatives, securities lending, repo, netting and collateral and clearing and settlement systems.

He specialises in OTC and securitised derivatives, structured capital markets products including derivative linked retail and wholesale structured products, investment banking sales and trading advisory work, Islamic derivatives, securities lending and repos, netting and collateral and their regulatory capital treatment and in the infrastructure aspects of the financial markets, such as payment and settlement systems, clearing systems, prime brokerage and custody.

Philip Punwar

Partner, Baker Botts LLP

Philip Punwar is a partner in the International Dispute Resolution group at Baker Botts LLP. He has been an Advocate of the DIFC Courts since June 2006.

During the course of his practice, Philip has represented the first Claimant to succeed at trial before the DIFC Court of First Instance, obtained the first Freezing Order issued by the Courts and appeared in the first ever appeal to the DIFC Court of Appeal. In 2014 he was the first Supervising Legal Representative appointed by the Courts and in 2015 he oversaw the execution of the Court of First Instance’s first Search Order.

Philip is author of “The Rules of the DIFC Courts with Commentary and Materials” (Sweet & Maxwell, 2011) and of the DIFC Academy of Law’s Commentaries on the DIFC’s Contract Law, Implied and Unfair Terms Law and Electronic Transactions Law (LexisNexis, 2017). He was a member of the DIFC Courts Users’ Committee from 2006 – 2009 and from 2011 – 2013. From 2009 – 2015, Philip was Chairman of the DIFC Courts Code of Conduct Drafting Sub-Committee, and from 2013 – 2015 he was Chairman of the DIFC Courts Education Sub-Committee. From 2013 – 2015, Philip was Director of the DIFC Courts Advocacy Training Programme. He has been a member of the DIFC Courts Rules Sub-Committee/Committee since 2009.

Joanne Fischlin

Head of Corporate, External and Legal Affairs, Microsoft Gulf FZ LLC

Joanne Fischlin heads the Legal and Government Affairs for Microsoft Gulf, helping companies and governments on their digital transformation journey. Her team and her engage regularly with customers, partners and regulators to raise the awareness of key stakeholders on privacy, security and ethics best practices when adopting new technologies such as the cloud and AI.

Joanne is an attorney and certified compliance and ethics professional and during her career, she held various senior legal management positions in different industries incl. Retail, Manufacturing and Financial Services, advised on a large number of opportunities across EMEA, India and LATAM and has served on several boards.

Joanne was born in Switzerland in a small wine making village. She moved to Dubai eight years ago with her husband Cédric and their cat Freaky and they have since then rescued two dogs, Pepper and Pickles with whom they enjoy mountain trekking and desert camping.

Christina Blacklaws

Managing Director, Blacklaws Consulting – Former President of the Law Society

Christina studied Jurisprudence at Oxford and qualified as a solicitor in 1991.

Christina Blacklaws is a former President of the Law Society of England and Wales, the representative body of over 150,000 solicitors.

She is an innovator in the legal field, having developed and managed one of the first ‘virtual’ law firms and set up the UK’s very first Alternative Business Structure with the Cooperative Group. She was also one of the first Directors of Innovation at a top UK firm.

She now runs her own consultancy business providing strategic advice particularly in the areas of transformational change, technological developments and diversity and inclusion.

Christina is a non-executive director for 3 large law firms and for a lawtech business specialising in resource management and provides bespoke advice to many more.

She holds a range of public appointments including chairing two UK Government bodies in lawtech- The LawTech UK Panel and Innovate UK’s Next Generation Services Advisory Group. She is a member of the Ministry of Justice’s Legal Support Advisory Group.

Christina is a thought leader in the law and technology field. She chaired a Commission which reported on the use of algorithms in the criminal justice system (https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/research/algorithm-use-in-the-criminal-justice-system-report), has had a paper published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions A (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rsta/376/2128) and lectures internationally on technology, innovation and the future of legal services. Her recent TEDx talk on algorithmic bias can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPfkhfWPIwA&feature=youtu.be

She holds a Visiting Fellowship with the University of Manchester where she supports the Business School Computer Science and Law Faculties to develop structural engagement with the legal services industry.

Christina is passionate about diversity and inclusion and is the representative for the Women Lawyers Division on the Law Society of England and Wales Council and an active member of Thomson Reuters Women in Leadership in Law Advisory Board. She also sits on the editorial board of Women Lawyers.

As President, she spearheaded the largest ever global research on women in law involving thousands of lawyers over 20 countries and resulting in three reports and a UK government backed Pledge.

Christina speaks internationally on a wide range of business, legal and ethical topics and is a multi-award winning (for innovation and diversity and inclusion) published author, lecturer and frequent media commentator.

Mazen Boustany

Practice Focus

Representative Legal Matters

Professional Associations and Memberships

Admissions

• Lebanon (1997)
• Dubai – Registered Legal Consultant

Education

• Mudara-Institute of Directors, UAE (2012)
• Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment, UK (2010)
• Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment, UK (2007)
• St. Joseph University of Beirut (1996)
• University of Paris II (1994)

Eren Can Ersoy

Senior Associate, Kılınç Law & Consulting 

Eren Can Ersoy is a Senior Associate at Kılınç Law & Consulting and currently heads the firm’s Personal Data Protection and Cyber Crimes Department and works at the firm’s Innovation & Fintech, Competition Law, Administrative Cases and Projects Departments.

Eren Can Ersoy has gained experience in the fields of dispute resolution and litigation, taxation and administrative law, commercial law, data privacy law, IT law throughout his career and is specialized in execution of litigation processes, resolution of taxation and administrative disputes, conducting personal data protection compliance projects, cybercrimes, permission and approval processes on the basis of merger & acquisition projects before Competition Authority, preparation of any commercial contract and execution of negotiation processes.

Education

Bar Admissions

Languages