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Legacy: Putting the Family First
This comprehensive guide is designed to help you navigate the intricate landscape of family business and private wealth in the Middle East, where family businesses constitute approximately 60% of GDP and employ 80% of the workforce in the GCC, offering unparalleled opportunities for wealth creation and preservation.
Packed with insights, strategies, and expert advice from our talented lawyers, Legacy provides tailored solutions to the unique challenges of asset protection, succession planning, and dispute resolution in this dynamic region.Read the publication and equip yourself with the knowledge and tools necessary to thrive, whether you’re a seasoned investor, a family business owner, part of the next generation, or a newcomer exploring opportunities in the region.
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A complete spectrum of legal services across jurisdictions in the Middle East & North Africa.
Al Tamimi & Company boasts the Middle East and North Africa's leading team of legal experts dedicated to high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals and the family business community.
Our Family Business and Private Wealth practice offers a 360 degree approach borne out of our deep understanding of our clients’ businesses, family circumstances and life objectives. Whether a client requires a family dispute resolved, assets protected, legacy planned for or succession built for generations to come, the team provides creative and strategic solutions that support our clients in even the most complex, high profile or sensitive of situations.
Our clients include family businesses, entrepreneurs, high net worth individuals and international investors, many of whom operate globally.
Robust structures & workable solutions
In the Middle East, family businesses dominate key industries and employ over half the region’s workforce. However, they are confronted by major challenges. Few family businesses will remain in the family’s ownership by the third generation. Added to this, very few family businesses have put in place the legal structures necessary to protect their stakeholders’ core assets.
We are the leaders in our region for the development of robust legal protections to guard against the risks accompanying any transition in senior leadership. We can also help to mitigate against the risk that financial failure in one part of the family business will affect the rest of the family’s core assets.
We offer solutions which are workable under Middle Eastern legal systems, global in scope, and compliant with both local and Sharia law.
Seasoned Practitioners
We can also help clients with legal issues in other countries, outside the Middle East and North Africa, having UK, US and European qualified lawyers in house as well as close working relationships with select international law firms. Through our international network we can introduce clients to trusted financial institutions, tax advisors, accountants, education, real estate and corporate finance consultants.
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Bespoke, specialist private wealth advice
Our Family Business and Private Wealth team offers unique capabilities to support families and high net work individuals to manage and preserve their wealth.
We advise on estate and succession planning, including establishing bespoke trust, foundation, SPV and family office structures to consolidate, hold and manage assets and investments. We specialize in wills & probate and have in house sharia legal experts that regularly advise on sharia compliant structures, wills, hiba (lifetime gifts) and sharia inheritance matters.
Our practice is not limited to the MENA region given our clients’ global footprint and we always take into account our clients’ multijurisdictional corporate and personal investment portfolio ensuring seamless legacy and estate planning across borders.
Our family law practice is both domestic and international; offering a full range of solutions to resolve and mitigate family disputes and advise our private clients on all personal status related matters, including divorce, custody of children, alimony, pre-nuptial & post-nuptial agreements, mediation and divorce settlement agreements.
Our Private Client Services team includes highly specialised litigators who are experts in dispute resolution for family businesses, family members and high net worth individuals. Whether by mediation, arbitration, litigation, our team aims to resolve issues facing families as efficiently and as quietly as possible, always acting as not just lawyers but as our clients’ trusted advisors.
How we can help our clients
Examples of our Family Business
and Private Wealth work
We represented a Saudi family owning diverse businesses in the restructuring of its corporate group under a holding company which administers a Sharia-compliant trust established under the Trust Law of the Dubai International Financial Centre for the benefit of family members. We restructured the Group in both GCC and non-GCC jurisdictions under the new family holding company which serves as trustee under a trust arrangement governing family equity entitlements, management and stewardship.
UAE Family with Onshore and Offshore Structures. We drafted a Family Constitution and implemented a succession plan for this UAE family which held a mixture of onshore GCC companies and offshore assets owned through a trust.
We advised members of a GCC family establishing offshore trusts in Jersey to hold UK investments under legal structuring arrangements compliance with the inheritance laws of Saudi Arabia and the GCC.
Which are registered locally as well as being mirrored and registered in a number of jurisdictions
Including wills, matrimonial and asset protection regimes and implementing foundations and trusts for holding personal assets
Key Contact
Richard Catling Partner, Corporate Commercial
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