About

‘My job at Noor Bank has been unique, in that I joined the Bank prior to its formal launch to the public, and have therefore been responsible for creating the legal department and the legal processes within the company’, says general counsel Omar Rahman when discussing his 12-year career with the major Dubai-based bank. He has also been given significant responsibility for strategic projects from the very beginning of his time with Noor. ‘I was asked to lead the whole project team in a major cross-border acquisition that we were considering back in 2008’, he recalls. ‘By that, I mean not just the legal team, but the whole project team, involving finance, strategy, M&A, operations and HR. It was an invaluable experience, and I feel that the experience has made me more commercial in my outlook, and appreciative of all of the dynamics in large scale transactions’. His work on complex transactions continues to this day: ‘In 2017, we provided US$100m financing to the private equity Abraaj Group, which collapsed in 2018. The facility was secured with charges over limited partnership stakes in eight funds administered by Abraaj. In a very complex and bespoke deal, which had to be blessed by the Cayman courts, we agreed to convert our US$100m debt into a direct ownership of the limited partners’ stakes which were secured to us. This was a first for the market, and has been praised in private equity circles for its innovation’.