About

A highly respected corporate counsel within the region, Nick Hornung is praised by sources for his successful defence of Dubai World subsidiary, Istithmar World, in a $750m two-year arbitration. Having practised for a number of years across Linklaters LLP’s UK and Asia offices, Hornung is well known for his expertise in major international MandA, private equity, joint ventures and IPOs. He is also leading Dubai World’s ongoing $14.6bn debt optimisation project. ‘Riding the global financial crisis’, he concedes, has been a major challenge of recent times, requiring him to run multiple distressed transactions and deal with widescale redundancies. During his nine years at the group, Hornung built Istithmar World’s in-house legal function from scratch and merged it with the main Dubai World team. He now heads the end product, a 12-strong ‘lean and highly respected in-house legal team’, supporting the entire group. When it comes to outside counsel, he suggests greater ‘innovation’ would be an improvement.