Middle East

For more than a decade, Covington has served business entities, government agencies, and private investors with interests throughout the Middle East. The firm’s Dubai office includes lawyers who have lived and worked across the region for more than 30 years, and we have developed a close network of local counsel and experts to ensure comprehensive, localized, and objective advice throughout the region, including in Bahrain, the Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, where we often collaborate with the highly regarded Almarzouk firm.

Our office in Dubai serves as a key entry-point to the Gulf and focuses on a wide range of regional economic development and diversification matters, including the acquisition, development, and financing of energy and other infrastructure projects and the developing regional regulatory regime that drives these investments.  The industries our team supports include oil and gas (both upstream and downstream), water, power, and mining and agricultural projects. Our lawyers in the region work closely with Covington’s global dispute resolution, public policy, anti-corruption, export controls, corporate, international tax, and energy regulation practices across the firm to develop comprehensive solutions for clients.

Combining local knowledge and global reach, we support our clients with strategic advice across business lines, territories, and sectors. As regional companies have grown and expanded internationally, they have turned to us for advice on their most critical business matters. We understand the challenges of doing business in vastly different legal contexts, and we help navigate our clients through the narrow channels of unfamiliar markets and territories.

Our “law plus policy” focus is unique in the region: our lawyers and policy advisors include a trove of former high-ranking government officials and policymakers who provide unparalleled support to our government clients, including individual ministries, national heritage companies, and other state-owned or -controlled enterprises in areas of trade and business policy, regulatory development, and global regulatory interface.

Whether supporting foreign companies doing business in the Gulf or assisting local businesses in their efforts to expand internationally, our multi-disciplinary team of lawyers, economists, former government ministers and diplomats, partner closely with our clients to tackle their most complex commercial and legal challenges.