Welcome to the first edition of Al Tamimi & Company’s Legal Leaders in MENA report. We set out to explore what keeps legal decision-makers awake at night, with a view to digging deeper into the emerging risks and growing priorities that challenge and inspire our clients.
In the following pages we are proud to share the views of some 700 legal decision-makers operating across nine countries and 13 industry sectors in our markets.
All of these individuals have direct responsibility for legal issues within their organisations, and we are extremely grateful to them for sharing their views with us on their strategic priorities, investment objectives, the risk and compliance outlook and the role of technology.
As the global community gradually emerges from the catastrophic impact of the Covid pandemic, domestic and international businesses operating across the MENA region are faced with a new and dynamic reality. Countries across the Middle East and North Africa are moving to enhance and modernise their regulatory regimes to both attract foreign direct investment and better compete on a global stage, and companies must quickly make sense of the increasingly sophisticated requirements of doing business in the region.
At Al Tamimi & Company we aim to be a strategic partner for legal decision-makers, helping them to become a significant force in shaping the future of their business. We are not surprised to find that those we spoke to share our view that the role of the legal decision-maker is growing in importance, yielding greater influence on corporate strategy and taking an expanding business advisory role. We see the fast-moving regulatory environment creating a challenging backdrop to business, and we stand ready to support clients as the ESG conversation continues to gather pace and – along with technological innovation – increasingly impacts on the legal remit.
As we move through 2022, the MENA region as a whole is in a bullish mood, with investment high on the agenda. With the first World Expo ever held in the region recently taking place in Dubai, the appetite for its mission of ‘Connecting Minds and Creating the Future’ is being embraced. The Expo welcomed 192 countries to our shores – never before have so many nations and so many cultures gathered together to reimagine the world of tomorrow, with a focus on creating true and meaningful partnerships.
We hope that this report represents a useful contribution to the connected thinking of the legal profession in our region, as we all work together in pursuit of sustainable growth.
Essam Al Tamimi Chairman
Samer Qudah Managing Partner
