About

A global holding company that supervises and manages a huge portfolio of projects, Dubai World made headlines in 2015 when it implemented a debt optimisation project to restructure and extend the initial $14.2bn Dubai World debt. Managing a diverse array of assets, the legal team has been central in ensuring lower debt exposure via renegotiations of credit terms. The successful resolution of this long process was critical not only for Dubai World, but for Emirate Dubai itself. The team, led by general counsel Nick Hornung, instigated the highly technical legal mechanism and filed under “Decree 57”, a first for the team and only the second ever filing under Decree 57, involving 135 creditor entities which were convinced to sign on consensual basis. The filing was hailed in the press as marking a new era for the Emirates. The legal team has also shown its creativity by introducing systems to assist legal and asset managers to easily identify obligations through register tools and summaries, which in turn increased communications between the two groups. As a result, says Hornung, ‘the role of the in-house lawyer and asset manager has largely merged’ and, with the number of asset managers decreasing, the legal team members have been able to assume these responsibilities. The majority of the legal team stems from the former team of Istithmar World, an investment subsidiary group of Dubai World, which merged to attain streamline efficiencies. Hornung, who also continues to serve as general counsel and company secretary of Istithmar World, says ‘In the last two years alone, the Dubai World legal team has executed more than 20 major M&A transactions in jurisdictions all over the world and much of the legal work has been done entirely in-house, saving millions of dollars in legal fees’.