Unrest in the Middle East has prompted a prominent 
role for lawyers as scrutiny grows over the assets of the 
region's key political players, as Bakers' Paul Stibbard reports

The recent turmoil in the Middle East has refocused attention on unexpected issues arising for clients in politically volatile regions. Not only have a number of countries, such as Egypt and Tunisia, been overtaken by abrupt political change, perhaps more seriously, regional tensions between countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, Iran and Israel and the increasing instability in Syria and Yemen have turned the region into a political tinder box. This has focused major families on political risk, wealth preservation and succession structures.

The crisis in Egypt neatly encapsulates some of these difficulties. Many Egyptian businesses held overseas subsidiaries in other major trading jurisdictions. With the sudden political revolution, these non-resident assets owned through Egyptian holding companies were placed at risk. In practice, businesses increasingly are now considering corporate inversions to protect such non-resident subsidiaries from a similar political implosion, with a non-resident holding company owning each subsidiary.