Linklaters

The firm has extensive experience of acting on transactions throughout the region, including in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and Lebanon.  Each jurisdiction has a specialised team headed by experienced partners with an established local practice. Leading regional and global companies and financial institutions therefore benefit from Linklaters’ deep knowledge of the broader region, the individual markets within it and the overall strength of the firm’s global resources.

Across industry sectors including financial services, sovereign wealth funds, real estate, energy and infrastructure and telecoms. Linklaters has an outstanding track record in major corporate/M&A transactions entering and exiting the region and groundbreaking finance deals.

Recent transactions include advising

• the finance parties, including seven export credit agencies, 31 commercial banks the Islamic Finance and the Public Investment Fund, on the multi-sourced financing (including approximately US$8.5bn of senior debt) for Saudi Aramco Total Refinery and Petrochemical Company’s greenfield refining and petrochemical project in Saudi Arabia. The total project costs are over US$14bn and the Project represents one of the few Greenfield refineries to make it to market in recent years (Roject Finance deal of the year, IFLR Middle East Awards, 2010; Middle East Oil & Gas Deal of the Year, Euromoney, 2010).
• Saudi Rail Organisation on the Makkah-Medina High Speed Railway Project in Saudi Arabia.
• Zain on the sale of its African mobile telecommunications business, excluding its operations in Sudan and Morocco, to Bharti Airtel Limited for an enterprise value of US$10.7bn
• Borse Dubai on its US$2.4bn conventional and Islamic refinancing of its acquisition facilities used to finance the purchase of a stake in NASDAQ (Restructuring Deal of the Year, IFLR Middle East Awards, 2009)

Recent awards include

Middle East and North Africa M&A Law Firm of
Mergermarket 2010

Restructuring deal of the year - Borse Dubai
IFLR Middle East Awards 2009

Cross-border Deal of the Year - Zain-Bharti Airtel
Acquisitions Monthly

Law Firm of the Year 2010
Acquisitions Monthly

Middle East Oil & Gas Deal of the Year 2010 – SARTOP/Jubail
Euromoney Project Finance Magazine

Project Finance Deal of the Year - Jubail
IFLR Middle East Awards 2010

M&A Deal of the Year - Kingdom Holdings/Kingdom Hotel Investments
IFLR Middle East Awards 2010

Equity deal of the Year - Du rights issue
IFLR Middle East Awards 2010

Equity team of the Year
IFLR Middle East Awards 2010