About

In the more than six years he has been at Waha Capital, Peter Howley has spearheaded a major expansion of the team’s abilities. ‘There has been a significant up-skilling of the team’, he says, ‘and we are now well equipped to deal with a significant percentage of issues which come across our desk on a day-to-day basis. Engaging outside counsel remains important, but we have reduced external legal spend while also increasing engagement with our commercial colleagues and involvement in complex company and portfolio matters, all as a result of the team’s increased capability’. Formerly in private practice with international law firms in London, Howley vividly remembers his first in-house deal as a landmark career experience: ‘Closing my first deal as an in-house counsel (the sale of an aircraft portfolio) opened my eyes to what a different job being in-house counsel actually is. While you remain a legal adviser, the commercial pressures and dynamics of an in-house role really are quite different to private practice – you are closer to the deal and making key decisions almost all the time’. Since then, he has gone from strength to strength with a number of blockbuster completed deals during his in-house career. ‘The de-SPAC of NPS into NASDAQ-listed NESR was a one-of-a-kind cash and stock transaction, with the added complexity of US regulatory oversight’, he recalls. ’We have also had significantly accretive transactions through the acquisition of stakes in CVAS (a technology company focused on airtime credit lending) and oil-field services related entity Petronash’.