RIYADH: Clifford Chance has further strengthened its relationship with Al Jadaan and Partners Law Firm, through the secondment of two new senior Clifford Chance lawyers and four associates to Riyadh. Omar Rashid, counsel, brings with him a wealth of international and regional corporate and equity capital markets experience, having recently advised the respective investment banks on the ‘du’ rights issue and Aluminium Bahrain IPO. Omar advises local, regional and international clients in relation to inbound and outbound investment in/out of Saudi Arabia in the form of mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, public takeovers, equity investments and initial public offerings. Omar arrived in Riyadh shortly after the Clifford Chance banking and finance team had increased its presence by the secondment of Paul Latto, Counsel. Paul has extensive international and regional experience in bank lending and related areas, including acquisition finance, restructuring and insolvency, projects/asset finance and Islamic finance. Paul has acted on a number of the region’s highest profile and most complex finance transactions and is recognized in banking and finance by Chambers Global. Omar and Paul have been appointed joint head of corporate and capital markets and joint head of banking and finance respectively within the Al-Jadaan practice, alongside Al-Jadaan corporate partner Khalid Al-Abdulkareem and banking partner Abdulaziz Al-Abduljabbar.
 

BAHRAIN: Yahya Alyahya, CEO of Gulf International Bank (GIB), has been appointed as a member of the Group of Twenty (G-20) High Level Panel on Infrastructure Investment (HLPII), which will prepare recommendations for sealing up and diversifying financing for infrastructure needs in the developing countries for further presentation to the next G-20 Summit. Out of more than 40 candidates for this panel, Alyahya was selected along with 11 other individuals. In the past, Alyahya served on the board of the World Bank Group as executive director representing Saudi Arabia from 1999 to 2006. He also served as an advisor to the governor of Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. “The mandate of the HLPII will be to prepare recommendations for the upcoming G-20 Summit in France in order to scale up and diversify financing for infrastructure needs, including financing form public, semi-public and private sector sources, and to identify with multilateral development banks a list of concrete regional initiatives,” Alyahya added. “The panel will take into account the limitations of risk bearing capacity of private and semi-public finance, lessons of successes and failures from the past and ongoing programs, best practice, the importance of durability and whole life costing, and innovative ways to mitigate and intermediate risks to attract finance,” he added. “In addition, the panel will review the action plan of the multilateral development banks,” Alyahya said.