Trowers & Hamlins LLP
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Alex Burton
Alex is a Partner in our Commercial Litigation team with over 30 years of experience in advising clients in complex and high-value commercial disputes both in the UK and internationally. He is primarily based in London but divides his time between our London and Gulf offices.
Alex has significant experience covering a wide range of industry sectors, including financial services, energy and infrastructure, aviation and professional liability.
His expertise includes matters involving commercial fraud, restructuring and asset management, in addition to disputes arising in connection with Islamic financing arrangements.
Alex represents clients in court proceedings (in particular the English Commercial Court) and arbitration references. He has represented clients in court or arbitration proceedings in several jurisdictions, and has familiarity with various arbitral rules and arbitration centres. He has considerable experience of operating in co-operation with lawyers in other jurisdictions in litigation and arbitration.
A substantial part of Alex's practice is focussed on clients who are based in or operate in the Middle East.
Ben Neary
Real Estate
Benjamin O’Brien-McQueenie
Benjamin is a Partner based in Oman and Heads up the Corporate team there. He specialises in equity capital markets, company mergers and acquisitions, corporate structuring and regulatory matters.
He is admitted to practise in England and Wales and advises on a range of international and regional clients investing in or from the Middle East as well as banking institutions, private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds. He has managed transactional matters with a GCC nexus with combined deal values in excess of $5bn.
Bilal Kahlon
Bilal is a Partner based in Trowers & Hamlins' Bahrain office.
Bilal has over 10 years of experience in banking and finance matters in the Gulf region with a particular expertise in project finance, Islamic finance and debt capital markets.
Bilal leads our Saudi finance practice and has consistently been recognised as a leading lawyer in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain by international legal directories including Chambers and Partners, Legal 500 and IFLR. Having grown up in Bahrain, Bilal has strong ties with Bahrain and the Gulf region as a whole. Bilal is admitted to practice in England.
Brian Howard
Brian is a Partner in Trowers & Hamlins' Bahrain office and heads the corporate team in Bahrain as well as the international funds practice. He has nearly 20 years' experience working with clients from or investing in the GCC.
He advises clients in respect of public and private company mergers and acquisitions, corporate structuring and regulation (including corporate finance, company and group structuring, shareholders' and joint venture arrangements, constitutional documents and corporate governance) in addition to a broad range of commercial and contractual matters.
Brian also advises a number of banks, private equity clients and sovereign wealth institutions in respect of Bahraini and offshore fund establishment in addition to international private equity investments and disposals.
Brian also works on the structuring of joint ventures for some of the Middle East's landmark mixed use land developments as well as a number of regional tourism development projects.
Cheryl Cairns
Cheryl Cairns is a Partner in Trowers & Hamlins' Dubai office, having joined the firm in 2007, and leads the firm's International Construction practice across the MENA region. Cheryl specialises in both contentious and non-contentious construction law.
Cheryl has over 15 years' experience in the construction sector, and has been based in the Middle East since 2007 regularly advising employers, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers in respect of claims arising throughout the life cycle of major construction and infrastructure projects, which include rail, aviation and oil and gas sectors.
Cheryl is highly experienced in the drafting of pleadings, attendance at preliminary and procedural hearings, meeting with and obtaining proofs of evidence from witnesses of fact and liaising with engineering, delay and quantum experts.
As well as contentious matters, Cheryl provides contract advisory services to clients on procurement issues, amendments to redress the balance of risk in standard form (in particular FIDIC) and bespoke building contracts, consultancy agreements and forms of ancillary security relating to significant international infrastructure and development projects.
Deborah Howard
Deborah is a Partner in Trowers & Hamlins' Bahrain office where she has been for 18 years, having previously worked at the firms' London and Oman offices.
Deborah specialises in international dispute resolution and litigation and has many years of experience working in the region on high profile complex cross border disputes.
Much of Deborah's client work and experience includes acting as lead partner in litigation both in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia including a number of recent high-profile cases in the Bahrain Chamber for Dispute Resolution.
Deborah leads the court work on the liquidation of The International Banking Corporation BSC(c) (In Liquidation) (TIBC). This is a high profile, cross boarder complex case which has involved the adjudication of claims that have a value of around US$2.1 billion.
Dominic O’Neil
Dominic O'Neil is a consultant legal advisor working from Trowers & Hamlins Bahrain office.
Over his 34 years with the firm, Dominic has acted for a broad range of international and locally based corporate clients, financial institutions, public bodies and ultra-high net worth individuals on a variety of corporate, investment, restructuring and corporate finance related matters. Dominic was the co-head of the firm's global private equity group and specialises in private equity investment in infrastructure and infrastructure related projects. He has led teams involved in the successful completion of numerous substantial investments and disposals in the power, petrochemicals, manufacturing, health, education and transport sectors principally in the Middle East, Levant and South East Asia regions.
Dominic has extensive experience of the management and operation of businesses in the Middle East and regularly provides strategic advice to clients on a wide range of issues and challenges.
Unkar Chanian
Unkar is a Partner in Trowers & Hamlins' International Real Estate team in Bahrain. Unkar has worked in Bahrain since 2014, having relocated after working for many years in the City of London where he assisted Pensions Funds with the management of their multi million pound property portfolios.
Unkar has a wealth of both international and regional experience in advising on all aspects of commercial property, with a particular emphasis on landlord and tenant matters, hotels and hospitality and large scale mixed use developments. Since arriving in Bahrain, Unkar has assisted developers on some of the largest development projects within Bahrain, including Diyar Al Muharraq and Marassi Al Bahrain and has provided assistance and advice for a large regeneration project in the heart of Manama. Most recently Unkar worked with the newly established Bahrain Real Estate Regulatory Authority in the drafting of new laws to provide a regulatory framework for the Real Estate Sector in Bahrain.
Victoria Robertson
Victoria is a commercial and data law specialist and partner in our commercial team.
She focusses upon complex contracts and projects and in particular those involving data privacy issues. She has particular expertise in a wide range of technology agreements, regularly advising both providers and customers of IT services.
Victoria has a particular interest in the life sciences, healthcare and fertility sectors, advising pharmaceutical companies, service providers in the pharma sector, fertility clinics and other service providers within the fertility sector. She is chair of the regulatory committee for the AI Fertility Society and regularly speaks on matters such as AI, ethics and data privacy.