The changes to the UAE Commercial Companies' law, which were announced on Monday and include allowing almost all companies to be fully foreign owned, have been widely welcomed.
The idea of further opening up the economy to foreign investment will have obvious potential benefits such as attracting more FDI and spurring business activity. This has been an evolution of a number of steps over the last 17 years or so, making doing business in the UAE easier for all nationalities.
The changes to the law will prove interesting in terms of how it will impact the well-established ecosystem of onshore and offshore jurisdictions in the country and it will take some time after the amendments are in effect for the landscape to be fully realised.
Host Mustafa Alrawi discusses this milestone development with Omar Momany, partner and head of the corporate and commercial practice group at Baker McKenzie Habib Al Mulla, and another partner at the leading law firm, Hani Naja, who is also a corporate and commercial legal expert. In this episode:
- The commercial companies law (0m 32s)
- The changes the new law would bring (2m 06s)
- The onshore and offshore ecosystem (9m 10s)
- Why does owning 100% of a company matter? (14m 08s)
- What we don't know yet (20m 47s)
- Headlines (25m 23s)
