Jonathan Silver

Full Profile

Jonathan has worked with clients operating in most business sectors including financial services, international trade, FMCG, energy, construction, transportation and commodities. He has led numerous transaction teams; assisting clients navigate the regulatory complexities of multi-jurisdictional transactions across the Middle East and Africa.

Jonathan was a partner in Clyde & Co from 1989, when his own practice merged with Clyde & Co until earlier this year when he became a Consultant to the Firm.  He founded, chaired for over 15 years and remains a member of what is now the Firm’s MEA Regional Management Board and served for 11 years on the Firm’s Global Management Board. At the time of the merger, in 1989, Clyde & Co’s operation in the region comprised four lawyers.  Since then, Jonathan has been instrumental in developing a leading Middle East and Africa regional practice delivering legal services to the highest professional standard to clients from inside and outside the region with more than 85 partners, over 270 legal professionals and more than 540 employees in total working in 9 offices in the Middle East and Africa.   

Jonathan has been described by Chambers Global as a 'leading light with an excellent mind' and his market expertise is widely acknowledged as being amongst the very best in the entire region. He has been named as a leading UAE practitioner in The International Who's Who of Mergers & Acquisitions Lawyers Guide, recognised by Asian MENA Counsel as UAE External Counsel of the Year, which identifies individual lawyers who have been recognised as 'exceptional' by a survey of over 18,000 in-house counsel based across Asia and the Middle East; named as a Senior Statesperson by Chambers Global; and in 2021, received a UAE Lifetime Achievement Award from Chambers Middle East. Jonathan has also been listed in Dubai’s Top 100 most influential people, and has been ranked as one of the world's leading practitioners in the Who's Who Legal: Thought Leaders - M&A and Governance 2023 report. He has also recently been named in Legal 500’s Private Practice Powerlist 2024: M&A - Middle East.

Jonathan is one of the very few English solicitors who has served as a director of a company listed on The London Stock Exchange and is probably the only solicitor to have chaired the Board of such a company.

Jonathan is Chairman of the Emirates Racing Authority Appeal Panel on which he has served since 2012.

Experience

• Advising on the ground breaking re-domiciliation into a free zone in the UAE of a company incorporated in Madeira that holds a major port development and management concession in relation to a port in Africa to take advantage of a double tax treaty to which the UAE is a party including advice on related structuring, tax, regulatory, financing and security issues.
• Advising on and effecting the re-structuring of a group of retail trading companies, advising on a substantial private equity investment in the reorganised group and a proposed initial public offering.
• Advising a privately owned, multi-national organisation headquartered in the UAE with diverse commercial interests and assets across five continents on the restructuring of its businesses, the disposal of stakes in a number of those businesses, devising bespoke arrangements to deal with the ownership of those interests and assets and to ensure succession planning and on-going management controls.
• Advising on the legal, regulatory, structuring aspects, documentation and financing for a major inland container terminal development to facilitate the flow of trade between China, Europe and the former Soviet states.
• Advising on the legal, regulatory and structuring aspects, documentation and financing for a USD 1.5 billion mixed use residential, tourist and leisure complex in the Middle East.
• Advising Motorola Inc on the Saudi and MENA region aspects of the sale of its worldwide network assets to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for USD 975 million, involving corporate, tax, regulatory and employment issues in 11 jurisdictions including all of the AGCC countries, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Tanzania.
• Advising a multinational chemical company in connection with the restructuring and expansion of its business in the AGCC states involving the incorporation of a regional holding company in Bahrain, share transfers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and the incorporation of subsidiaries in each of the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar.
• Advising a well-known global corporation on the disposal of an interest in its operations in the Middle East involving the transfer of interests in and the re-structuring of 23 companies and branch offices in 15 jurisdictions.