Vanessa Abernethy

Co-Founder at Oryx Consulting / 100 Women in Finance

Discussion leader

Vanessa has over 25 years’ working as a corporate and financial services lawyer up to C-suite / Partner level, with exposure to businesses in many industries. Since early 2005 she has lived and worked in the UAE. Most recently she spent 6 1/2 years leading the legal and regulatory compliance function for a prominent family office based in Abu Dhabi with significant scale, global investments and regulated financial services entities in several jurisdictions. Previously she was a Partner in two international law firms in Dubai (Simmons & Simmons and Baker Botts) and she worked for a number of years with Clyde & Co. She has spent time with the Nasdaq Dubai Stock Exchange.

Vanessa’s legal expertise has included corporate transactional work - advising on M&A, joint ventures, equity and debt security offerings, IPOs, private equity transactions, corporate restructuring, debt reorganisation and fund structuring. She has regularly advised on financial services regulation relating to all UAE regulators, obtained licenses for many financial institutions enabling them to conduct business in the UAE and has also regularly advised on companies law, commercial contracts, employment law, dispute resolution management and corporate governance. Vanessa has significant transaction management experience, having project managed all work streams of complex transactions.

Before moving to the UAE, Vanessa spent 2 1/2 years working for the New Zealand Stock Exchange and several years at New Zealand's largest commercial law firm.

With various board level appointments, Vanessa is the current Chair of the New Zealand Business Council in Dubai and Chair of a Dubai based entity in the healthcare technology industry.

She has been recognised as a key individual in the UAE by various legal directories and was honoured to have made the 2019 list of the “Top 50 Most Influential Women in Finance in the Middle East”, in a Dun & Bradstreet publication.