The Regulations have now been finalised and came into effect as of 14 June 2015. 

As with the Dubai International Financial Centre (“DIFC”) ADGM will be a special free zone and will operating as a new jurisdiction carved out of the UAE and will not be subject to UAE civil and commercial law. English common law shall apply in and form part of the law of ADGM, with appropriate safeguards in order to ensure that any undesirable evolvement of the common law may be overridden by ADGM. This was not unexpected as it was commonly felt that ADGM would create a familiar legal environment for international banks and financial institutions.

From an employment perspective the Regulations closely follow those of the DIFC and as such differ in a number of significant areas from the UAE position (which we refer to as ‘onshore' in this article). 

The Key Points