Clifford Chance advises on first Ijara Sukuk Programme in the UAE

Notes and media contacts

1. Clifford Chance is one of the world's leading law firms, helping clients achieve their goals by combining the highest global standards with local expertise. The firm has unrivalled scale and depth of legal resources across the three key markets of the Americas, Asia and Europe and focuses on the core areas of commercial activity: capital markets; corporate and M&A; finance and banking; real estate; tax; pensions and employment; litigation and dispute resolution. Clifford Chance has 28 offices in 21 countries and 3,800 legal advisers.

2. Capital Markets: The capital markets practice comprises over 422 partners and lawyers who concentrate on securities transactions and other products sold into the capital markets. The practice is founded on a full-service US and UK securities law capability, complemented by local securities law expertise in each of the key financial centres.

The combination of local knowledge with an international perspective enables us to provide practical, integrated legal advice covering the full spectrum of global capital raising activities including public and private domestic and international offerings of traditional debt and equity securities as well as convertible and other derivative and structured securities.

Consistently ranked as the 'best legal practice for securitisation' by key commentators, the Clifford Chance International Securitisation Group is at the forefront of the securitisation markets across the world. The Group advises most of the leading market participants and provides an in-depth knowledge of complex issues relating to the securitisation of a broad spectrum of assets.

Our clients include issuers, originators, arrangers, managers, investors and other finance providers, trustees, rating agencies, monoline insurers and swap counterparties from a variety off industries including energy, transport, infrastructure projects, and real estate.

3. Clifford Chance's 75-lawyer Dubai office is fully integrated into the firm's worldwide network of offices and has a market leading finance practice in the Middle East. The firm celebrated its 30th anniversary in the United Arab Emirates in 2005, having opened its first office in the region in Sharjah in 1975.

* Includes a co-operative office in Riyadh

For further information about this release contact Debashis Dey, Head of Capital Markets and Structured Finance, Gulf Region on +971 4 362 0624 or Qudeer Latif, Gulf Islamic Finance Partner on +971 4 362 0675 or Melanie Carruthers, Business Development Manager on +971 4 362 0623