King & Spalding has added partner Stephen Kelly to its Middle East team as the firm continues to expand its regional and international real estate practice.
Kelly joined King & Spalding’s Dubai office as the ninth partner in the Gulf region on March 24. He previously worked at Clyde & Co, where he was a partner and led the firm’s Middle East real estate development team. Kelly represents master developers, sub-developers, hotel operators and service providers on a variety of property issues, with an emphasis on the title structuring of complex large scale master communities and mixed-use hotel developments. He has a particular focus on advising clients with developments impacted by the region’s various “strata title regimes,” i.e., regimes governing the ownership, operation and management of communities and developments that have multiple-ownership and shared areas and facilities.
Kelly’s portfolio includes acting on prominent developments across the region such as Burj Khalifa, Palazzo Versace, Dubai Pearl and Sun & Sky Towers. Other notable deals include advising on the master community title structuring of Saadiyat Island, The Wave Muscat, Emirates Living and other master communities across Dubai. Kelly is ranked in both Chambers and Legal 500.
“Stephen is a fantastic lawyer with a proven pedigree,” said Jawad Ali, managing partner of King & Spalding’s Middle East offices. “Our Middle East team has a strong reputation for local and cross-border real estate matters stemming from the region, so he is a great recruit who further enhances our capabilities.”
Kelly is the latest in a line of recent senior recruits during the past year to deepen King & Spalding’s international real estate practice. In 2012, the firm established an English law property team with the addition of Nigel Heilpern from Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson and launched a French real estate practice after securing a seven-strong group – including partners Benoit Marcilhacy and Pascal Schmitz – from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Axel Schilder, a real estate partner at Beiten Burkhardt, also joined in Frankfurt.
“We are committed to building our global real estate practice to serve our clients, covering developers, financiers and service providers,” commented Sarah Borders, leader of King & Spalding’s capital transactions and real estate practice. “The capital transactions and real estate team now has around 80 lawyers across the firm’s international network and we will continue to strengthen the practice.”
