About

Formerly chief legal counsel for the Middle East and Africa at Eaton Corporation, Dr Yasser Aboismail joined Schindler Group in August 2016 as general counsel and compliance officer for the Middle East and North Africa. He has also been a part time lecturer at the University of Dubai since mid-2014, teaching competition law to students taking an LLM in financial crimes. Moving to an in-house role and ‘exploring my potential as a business partner’ ranks among Dr Aboismail’s main career highlights: ‘I started to explore and unleash my potential as an effective business partner who drives the profitable and sustainable growth of the organisation that I belong to. Realising that all members of the business team, including myself, have one unified goal has enabled me to broaden my scope as a business leader and to leverage my influential powers to support my business folks to effectively achieve their duties and grow our business’. In leading the Schindler Middle East and North Africa legal function, Dr Aboismail reports that he has been successful in ‘changing the concept of the lawyer who normally comes to firefight’ after the company has incurred losses – which is too late. He mentions spearheading a wide-ranging project which has the goal of rectifying this. ‘This project aims to achieve a number of objectives. Firstly, that the process for originating, approving, signing and filing legal documentation is streamlined across MENA. Secondly, it aims to ensure that that contracts entered into by Schindler are properly reviewed, approved and signed by the relevant authorised individuals. Finally, it looks to properly manage and minimise contractual risks’, he explains.