Law Organization named IFLR’s Middle East Corporate In-House Team of the Year 2020
On Oct. 14, the International Financial Law Review (IFLR) publication granted the company’s Law Organization the Corporate In-House Team of the Year in the Middle East Award. In addition to winning the Corporate In-House Team of the Year award, both the initial public offering (IPO) and the SABIC acquisition transactions were recognized as Deals of the Year for their respective categories.
IFLR is a leading financial law publication in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, providing the global financial community with legal market intelligence, as well as highly reputable and closely monitored rankings of law firms and lawyers. IFLR’s awards recognize legal innovations in cross-border transactions, and are presented following months of research and careful deliberation by the publication’s editors and journalists.
“I am very proud of my team, and of course, what the company was able to achieve last year. The Law organization is unique in the region in terms of the depth of talent and expertise and this award is a testament to the company’s great milestones and achievements this past year, and to Law’s efforts in supporting those achievements, including the IPO. The team was able to support the company in achieving all these major milestones concurrently, and sometimes, at compressed timeframes,” said senior vice president and general counsel, Nabeel A. Al Mansour.
He also described what the award means to the company and what it took to win it. “The award is the ‘cherry on top’ for a year full of triumphs and milestones. The IPO has been widely hailed, and rightly so — in my opinion — as an exemplary transaction in the region and in the world, given its massive scale and the innovative groundwork that it took to pull it off. The acquisition of a majority stake in SABIC is a huge one as well, requiring extensive regulatory clearance and due diligence in numerous jurisdictions in a remarkable short period of time.”
The Saudi Aramco IPO was the largest initial public offering in history. The IPO involved several innovations — never before seen in the region — implemented over the course of nearly 4 years of extensive legal work leading up to the listing. While the SABIC acquisition is expected to enhance Aramco’s presence in the global petrochemicals industry, the sector is expected to record the fastest growth in oil demand in the years ahead. As part of the transaction, Aramco and the Public Investment Fund (PIF) filed for and obtained antitrust pre-notification clearances in 21 international jurisdictions prior to Aramco acquiring PIF’s 70% interest in SABIC on June 16, 2020.
The legal team’s tireless work ethic and ingenuity in preparing for and conducting the record-setting IPO and the SABIC acquisition have been appreciated by company stakeholders as well as external parties. IFLR’s announcement stated that there is “little doubt that Saudi Aramco had a transformational year,” and that the company’s legal team “implemented innovations that defined legal developments relating to regulations for hydrocarbons, capital markets, shareholders, company and corporate law, public concession agreements, and tax rules.”