Abu Dhabi Global Market

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Recognizing new realities in decentralization, the regulations aim to provide market players with governance flexibility within distributed ledger technology foundations.

By Stuart Davis, Brian Meenagh, Andrew Moyle, and Ksenia Koroleva

On October 2, 2023, the Board of Directors of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a financial free zone in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), enacted the Distributed Ledger Technology Foundations Regulations 2023 (Regulations). The Regulations were published on November 1, 2023.

Latham & Watkins has advised ADGM in drafting the Regulations. The Regulations were developed following extensive benchmarking across a number of peer jurisdictions and incorporate stakeholder feedback from ADGM’s April 2023 consultation paper. The adoption of the Regulations is part of the strategy to promote ADGM as a global center for digital assets.

The Regulations recognize the suitability of common law foundation structures for projects related to digital assets, and aim to allow maximum flexibility for the sector with respect to governance.

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On 15 June 2015, the Abu Dhabi Global Market (Global Market), Abu Dhabi’s financial free zone, published the following six new regulations concerning the regulation of non-financial services in the Global Market:

– Application of English Law Regulations;

– Companies Regulations;

– Operating Regulations;

– Insolvency Regulations;

– Employment Regulations; and

– Real Property Regulations.

As expected from the draft regulations issued by the Global Market earlier this year, the Global Market’s final approach in the regulations follows very closely…

The Abu Dhabi Global Market, Abu Dhabi’s new financial free zone, located on Al Maryah Island, recently issued a first wave of draft regulations and related consultation papers.

The Global Market’s general approach in the draft regulations follows very closely the  English law model. In particular, the Global Market is proposing to apply English common law and certain English statutes in the Global Market. No draft financial services regulation was included in the first wave of regulation.…