Trowers pulls out of Riyadh as sole lawyer defects to alliance firm
Trowers & Hamlins has been forced to terminate its exclusive alliance in Riyadh after its last associate in the city jumped ship to the firm’s local ally.
Abdullah Mutawi
The Lawyer reported in September (12 September 2011) that Trowers was left with just one associate in Riyadh and today the firm’s United Arab Emirates head Abdullah Mutawi confirmed that the associate has now left to join the firm’s Saudi Arabia associate firm Feras Alshawaf Law Firm.
Trowers’ exclusive tie-up with Feras Alshawaf Law Firm was dependent on the former having at least one employee in the country and now that employee has resigned, the formal alliance has come to an end. According to Mutawi, the associate, Abbas Khan, was frustrated at Trowers’ failure to redeploy another partner to Riyadh.
“We’ve had some troubles keeping people in Riyadh as it’s not easy to recruit people into Saudi,” said Mutawi. “We’re having discussions now about how we recruit the right people and deploy them to maximum effect”
Mutawi stressed that Trowers and Feras Alshawaf continued to work together on an informal basis and that Trowers was not planning to abandon Saudi Arabia as a jurisdiction.
“Our intention is not to move away from Saudi Arabia at all,” said Mutawi. “Indeed, it would be very difficult for a firm like ours to do that because a lot of our corporate clients are very focused on doing deals in Saudi Arabia.”
Kahn, who joined Feras Alshawaf as a partner, added: “I had an excellent relationship with Trowers and I left on a positive note. My firm still has a good relationship with Trowers, though not as formal, and we’re working together on a number of projects.”
In May 2011 Trowers closed its Jeddah office less than a year after opening in the Saudi Arabian city (23 May 2011).
Readers' comments (11)
Anonymous | 23-Feb-2012 4:01 pm
Nice picture of Tom Jones to accompany this story.
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Anonymous | 23-Feb-2012 4:14 pm
Perhaps it's not unusual for international law firms to have trouble recruiting and retaining lawyers in Saudi?
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Anonymous | 23-Feb-2012 4:37 pm
is he heading for the green, green grass of home?
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Anonymous | 23-Feb-2012 4:59 pm
Why why why Abdullah?
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Anonymouse | 23-Feb-2012 5:09 pm
I suppose we should clear up some of the factual inaccuracies in this story just for the sake of ensuring that the record is correct.
It cannot be the case that Abbas Khan was frustrated at Trowers inability to redploy "another partner" to Riyadh because Trowers never had a partner in Riyadh to start with. Leroy Levy ran the show from Dubai and Adrian Creed from Abu Dhabi.
Also hilarious that Mutawi thinks there are problems recruiting people into Riyadh. It only becomes a problem when you make the ones you have "redundant" to save the PEP of the magic 25.
It would be nice if someone at Trowers told the truth. The Saudi association did not have the support of key partners in the Middle East, including Mutawi. The London partnership failed to heed warnings about the Saudi practice and the head of the international division had no interest in engaging with the Saudi practice whatsoever.
The continual insistence from the leadership that this disaster is just a speed bump is nonsensical. Why would you be having discussions about recruitment into Saudi Arabia less than 12 months after the last redundancy exercise. How stupid does Trowers think people are.
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Anonymous | 24-Feb-2012 10:10 am
So Trowers is left with just Oman and UAE law capability for the Gulf? Looks like they have given up on the region.
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Anon | 24-Feb-2012 12:21 pm
And there's not much point to the Dubai office really, given how many lawyers it has lost over the past two years. What exactly are its areas of expertise?
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Anonymous | 24-Feb-2012 12:48 pm
Trowers needs to merge with or get taken over by a decent US firm. Warning to all of the good law firms in Saudi Arabia. Make sure that you are keeping your productive people happy otherwise they will be gone.Lots of joker lawyers in Saudi Arabia who are unable to produce.
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Anonymous | 25-Feb-2012 7:00 am
Why not have a graduate scheme for Saudis, if it's so difficult finding lawyers to go there? Surely Saudi lawyers won't need much incentive to stay in their own country. Also, that will lead to fewer doomed alliances because you can set up your Saudi alliance with any of the Saudis you've trained (and molded to your liking ;)). It really isn't rocket science.
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Anonymous | 27-Feb-2012 7:54 am
“a lot of our corporate clients are very focused on doing deals in Saudi Arabia.” Absolutely, and now they have to use a different law firm? Surely this firm must win prizes for its reverse business development policy.
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The Septic Skeptic | 27-Feb-2012 8:47 am
The story is old and tired, just like Trowers itself.
The Saudi practice was brought to Trowers by Leroy and once Leroy was ousted, the practice followed soon after.
Like someone said above, Trowers should just be honest and admit it never had any interest in a corporate practice in Saudi Arabia. Forget the rubbish about recruiting the right people and restarting again on the ground. Trowers is a projects firm and they should stick to what they do best. They don't need a presence in Saudi Arabia for projects and they should just write the past 4 years off as experience gained. Too bad about those who were collateral damage, but that is to be expected as a lawyer in the Middle East nowadays.
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