Norton Rose Fulbright closes Abu Dhabi and Kazakhstan offices
Firm becomes latest to close Middle East office leaving it with three bases in the region
January 09, 2018 at 09:30 AM
3 minute read
Norton Rose Fulbright has closed its Abu Dhabi office, leaving it with three offices in the region.
The office closed at the beginning of December, shortly after the firm completed its merger with US firm Chadbourne & Parke in June 2017.
At the time of the closure the office had three lawyers, including one partner, and three business services staff. Two of these support staff were made redundant, with everyone else relocated to Dubai, including projects and banking partner Paul Mansouri.
Norton Rose Fulbright Middle East head Deirdre Walker said: "Work here has become increasingly regionalised. It just made commercial sense to consolidate our resource in Dubai and for that reason we took the view that it made business sense to close the Abu Dhabi office.
"The focus over the next 12 months will be on internal promotions. That's something we are looking to progress."
The closure leaves Norton Rose Fulbright, which has operated in the region for 35 years, with bases in Dubai, Bahrain and Riyadh in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the firm also closed its Almaty office in Kazakhstan earlier this month. Partner Yerzhan Kurmarov has established a domestic legal practice called KM & Partners LLP.
Norton Rose Fulbright EMEA managing director Martin Scott said: "We mutually agreed that a full-service offering was no longer required by Norton Rose Fulbright in Kazakhstan."
The firm had previously seen several partner exits in Abu Dhabi, with TMT lawyer Dino Wilkinson recruited by Clyde & Co in July last year, while former office head David Baylis left in August 2016 to join the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority as a senior legal adviser.
He had headed the Abu Dhabi branch since 2013, when he relocated from London to take up the role.
Following its merger with Chadbourne, Norton Rose Fulbright relocated Walker, its former London-based Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) litigation head, to Dubai to head up the Middle East region.
She replaced former regional head Patrick Bourke, also a disputes partner, who returned to London, with City disputes partner Peter Scott replacing Walker in the EMEA leadership role.
Other firms closing offices in the region include Clifford Chance, which called time on its Qatar base in February 2017, and HSF which closed its Qatar office last summer, less than two years after the firm opted to pull the plug on its base in Abu Dhabi.
Previously, Latham & Watkins opted to shut both its Doha and Abu Dhabi offices in 2015 and now runs its regional practice out of Dubai and Riyadh.
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