About

Another segment of Ireland’s booming air travel support industry, ARI now has a truly international presence, around 3,000 employees and over $1bn in revenue. Emily Ennis, its head of legal affairs, says she ‘jumped at’ the opportunity to work for this multi-national duty-free retailer: ‘I knew the company had substantial operations in the Middle East, New Zealand, Canada, Cyprus and other countries as well as Ireland. The role has always turned out to have interesting twists especially regarding cross-border work’. Ennis names three recent projects in particular as ones that she has taken particular pleasure in, and these highlight the international nature of the role. ‘A significant standout moment was a recent contract we won in Oman to provide services for a new airport terminal in Muscat. This was a complex and lengthy negotiation that has given me a heightened sense of the commercial and legal sensibilities in the region’, she explains. ‘In Auckland’, Ennis continues, ‘we won a contract to run a new international airport on which I was the executive legal lead to help establish the duty free business, which provided me with a thorough understanding of the nuts and bolts of our operation; I was very proud to get this across the line’. Finally, Ennis mentions a €54m buyout deal of a JV partner in Cyprus: ‘This deal forced me to balance legal risks with all other inherent risk in the business in a structured way to close the deal. It included risky and complex finance arrangements that had to be navigated, and was a great example of finding a successful solution to a complicated business challenge’. Ennis has achieved a lot while with ARI, and continues ‘to build and expand the function’ to this day. It is a challenge that she relishes thoroughly, with Ennis believing that in-house work provides ‘a fantastic career’ for business-minded lawyers.