Description
About the Event
The growth of venture capital in the Gulf tells a wider story about the relationship between law and financial markets. Traditional onshore legal systems in the region were not designed around many of the structures and investor protections on which modern venture capital depends. As a result, Gulf investments were commonly structured through offshore jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands and BVI, even where the underlying businesses and economic activity remained in the region.
This seminar examines how Gulf states responded. In the UAE, the creation of financial free zones such as DIFC and ADGM introduced common law-based jurisdictions with their own courts, corporate frameworks and investment structures, providing international investors with many of the features they had previously sought offshore. Corporate laws outside the financial free zones have also increasingly evolved to accommodate modern investment practices.
Using venture capital as a case study, the seminar considers how market demand can drive legal reform, why states transplant or develop alternative legal models to attract internationally mobile capital, and whether the Gulf’s financial free zones are emerging as credible competitors to traditional offshore jurisdictions.
About the Speaker
Hussein Baxter is a senior M&A lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP and a prominent member of its Middle East practice, as well as a doctoral researcher at City Law School, London. Based in Dubai, he advises sovereign wealth funds, financial sponsors, multinational companies and emerging businesses on major cross-border M&A and private capital transactions, including early-stage and venture capital investments, across the Middle East and internationally.
Alongside practice, his doctoral research examines legal and institutional change in the Gulf, particularly the development of financial free zones, legal transplantation and the role of legal institutions in attracting international capital. He also teaches and speaks on M&A, international business and the Middle East at universities and business schools internationally, and is currently undertaking a research visit at the E.W. Barker Centre for Law & Business at NUS Law.
