In collaboration with the Middle East & Africa Compliance Association (MEACA), Ankura hosted an event with guest speaker Tom Hardin, a former rising star in the hedge fund industry who became the most prolific cooperating witness in a landmark FBI investigation into insider trading on Wall Street. This session provided compliance professionals with actionable insights to navigate ethical dilemmas, enhance organizational integrity, and build robust compliance frameworks in today's complex regulatory landscape.

Ankura co-hosted a roundtable brunch with LawInSport on Sports Governance in Riyadh. We explored sharing approaches to sports governance and integrity from Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world. As the Kingdom prepares to host major global sporting events, it is crucial to advance governance and regulatory frameworks, drawing lessons from international experiences. Our expert contributors included Nick De Marco KC, Blackstone Chambers, Steve Bainbridge, Head of Sport (Middle East) at Greenberg Traurig LLP, Sean Cottrell, CEO of LawInSport, Amani Khalifa, Partner, Head of KSA Disputes Practice, Freshfields, and Ankura's own Jonny Gray and Jonathan Brown.

Ankura’s Anti-Financial Crime experts Lee Hale, Carmel Speers and Andrew Pimlott were joined by industry experts Nishanth Nottath from Mashreq and Lloyd Meadows from Standard Chartered to provide insights on key financial crime compliance topics. The panel discussed recent legislative developments, trends in sanctions and proliferation financing, strategies to combat fraud innovatively, the emerging landscape of digital assets, the impact of geopolitical dynamics on compliance and the integration of technology and AI in compliance strategies.

In collaboration with the Middle East & Africa Compliance Association (MEACA), the first Ankura Forensic Forum breakfast seminar of 2024 focused on the emerging compliance trends for the year ahead.

With disputes relating to commercial agents (also known as distributors) on the rise in the UAE, Ankura and Al Tamimi & Co. delivered a breakfast seminar on an especially pertinent legislation; the new UAE commercial agencies law. The panel discussed the changes to and implications of Federal Law No. 3 of 2022 regulating Commercial Agencies ("New Law") in the UAE Federal Gazette, which repeals and replaces UAE Federal Law No. 18 of 1981 (the "Old Law"), both of which relate to commercial agencies. The seminar shared expert commentary on comparisons between the Old Law and the New Law; the applicability of the New Law; key trends in disputes arising from this change focusing on performance, compensation, and import breaches; and how agents and principals can deal with the changes and manage disputes arising from them.

This seminar, delivered in collaboration with Dentons, provided an insightful discussion on the intricate web of legal, technical, and corporate dimensions that shape the investigative landscape. From initiation to resolution, the expert panel shared invaluable insights into the investigation process. This covered the first 48 hours, collation of evidence, and interrogative interviews to forming fact-based conclusions and building a robust – and was capped off by an incredibly engaging question-and-answer session.

The topic of our inaugural breakfast seminar, as part of the AFF, used Tracing the Assets of a Bond Villain as the basis of a case study where we deconstructed our approach to this hypothetical asset tracing investigation and explained how we would leverage our arsenal of tools, resources, and techniques. The seminar provided an interactive setting which allowed us to break down the nuances of a typical asset tracing investigation by engaging our audience.