About

Emily Ennis is the head of legal affairs for ARI, which is an international duty free retailer operating in 16 locations worldwide and is owned by daa. She manages the global legal function to enable business growth and collaborate with executive and senior management on commercial legal matters globally to provide pragmatic advice on the mitigation of key risks and ARI to achieve the best available outcomes. She joined ARI from private practice in 2014, having spent seven years with Arthur Cox advising international companies on corporate and commercial advisory work and was ARI’s first dedicated in-house lawyer. She has built ARI’s legal function from scratch and has overseen many key developments and expansions in the business. She is also a key contributor to enabling the business successfully operate a new 10 year duty free contract at the Midfield Terminal in Abu Dhabi, which is scheduled to open later this year. She states that this experience has ‘moulded me as a professional as it was a multi-faceted, complex, high value and high risk project and like many projects, we encountered a number of challenges along the journey. It required close collaboration and teamwork across the business functions and across time zones and cultures which we successfully managed together and is a strong example of the partnership approach and teamwork ARI celebrates’. Ennis has also successfully completing the largest M&A deal that ARI or its parent company, daa, has ever undertaken. In 2014, upon joining ARI, Ennis advised on the buyout of one of the ARI’s 50:50 joint venture partners in its duty free business in Cyprus. She adds that this ‘gave me a hands-on appreciation for the value add of an in-house advisor taking a holistic, problem-solving approach and balancing or prioritising legal risk in conjunction with other risks and complexities inherent in the business and helping the business to navigate through these issues and achieve the commercial objectives whilst mitigating key risks’. Ennis is also responsible for building and developing the internal legal team in ARI, and enabling others to implement the vision and strategy for the legal team and supporting them in their development and careers. She introduced template agreements, bespoke compliance training and jurisdiction reviews for investing in new countries. Ennis has driven the development of innovative tools such as quick guides, with accompanying training to equip the business with skills to enable them to self-serve on straight-forward legal matters and close business deals faster. This method adds value to the business and allows the legal team to focus on more intensive strategic projects. Ennis has also hired and coached additional team members to enable them to guide and support the business’s expansion into new countries and enable the legal team take on more work and save on external costs. She is an exceptionally talented legal mind and mentor which is demonstrated in her management of ARI’s legal business.