Counsel on banking, financing arrangements and financial transactions.
The firm advises banks, financial institutions and corporate borrowers on project finance, syndicated lending and trade finance. The banking sector is supervised by the Qatar Central Bank under Law No. 13 of 2012 promulgating the QCB Law and the regulation of financial institutions, whose circulars and prudential instructions form an essential part of any financing structure.
We draft and review facility and security documentation; arrange mortgages, guarantees, assignments of rights and charged accounts; and handle bank guarantees and documentary credits, alongside Shari'a-compliant Islamic finance structures. We verify the borrower's capacity and the signatories' authority, in practice among the most common causes of failed enforcement.
On distress we work on rescheduling, restructuring and settlements and, where necessary, on enforcement of security and litigation over facilities and cheques, with the anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing requirements of Law No. 20 of 2019 observed at every stage of the transaction.
How we help
- Facility agreements and syndicated lending
- Security packages, mortgages and guarantees
- Bank guarantees and documentary credits
- Project finance and trade finance
- Islamic finance structures
- Compliance with Qatar Central Bank circulars
- Anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist financing
- Rescheduling, restructuring and settlements
In Qatar
The legal framework for banking and financing business in the State of Qatar rests on four pillars, none of which can be read in isolation from the others. The first is Law No. 13 of 2012 promulgating the Qatar Central Bank Law and the regulation of financial institutions, which sets out the power to license and to supervise financial institutions and makes the Central Bank's circulars and prudential instructions a binding part of the environment in which any financing is built. The second is the Civil Code, issued by Law No. 22 of 2004, the general reference for the sources of obligation, performance, and both real and personal security. The third is the Commercial Law, issued by Law No. 27 of 2006, which governs banking operations and commercial paper. The fourth is Law No. 20 of 2019 on combating money laundering and terrorism financing, whose preventive duties sometimes take precedence over the commercial interest in closing the transaction at all.
The regulator in this sector is the Qatar Central Bank. It is the higher authority over the financial institutions under its supervision: licences are granted, varied and withdrawn by it; prudential requirements and limits on credit concentration and related-party exposure are set by it; and so are the rules of sound governance and administration and the controls protecting the customer of financial services, including disclosure of the cost of credit. The first question in any financing structure is therefore not the text of the statute alone but the instructions in force at signature and at drawdown, because those instructions are renewed, and what was acceptable in an earlier transaction may not be acceptable in the next one.
The relationship between the Civil Code and the Commercial Law is that of the general to the special. The Civil Code governs the formation, validity and effects of contract, the transfer and extinction of rights, and mortgage and suretyship. The Commercial Law is the special law for commercial transactions, banking operations and commercial paper, and where it contains no special provision recourse is had to the Civil Code and to commercial custom. To these must be added the Commercial Companies Law, issued by Law No. 11 of 2015 and amended by Law No. 8 of 2021, because it governs the capacity of the corporate borrower, the limits of its objects and the authority of whoever signs for it, matters on which the binding force of the agreement itself depends and not merely its interpretation.
Financing and security disputes are heard by the competent civil and commercial courts of the State and their specialised circuits, and execution is pursued before the execution judge under the Civil and Commercial Procedure Law, issued by Law No. 13 of 1990. The parties may agree in writing to arbitrate civil and commercial matters under Law No. 2 of 2017, while compulsory execution remains a judicial function in every case. Proceedings are conducted in Arabic and documents are filed in Arabic or with a certified translation, a constraint that belongs to the drafting stage rather than to the litigation stage.