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BSA Signs MoU with Zubair SEC to Host Workshop and Legal Clinic




BSA Bin Shabib, Al Rashdi & Al Barwani (BSA), on Wednesday, October 17, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Zubair Small Enterprises Centre (Zubair SEC) to jointly host a workshop and legal clinic in Oman, which will offer free consultations for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the Sultanate. The MoU was signed by Abdulaziz Al Rashdi, the Local Partner representing BSA, and C. S. Badrinath, Group Chief Executive Officer of The Zubair Corporation, representing Zubair SEC. Also, in attendance were Ziyad bin Mohammad Al Zubair, member of the Board of Directors of The Zubair Corporation, and Mundhir Al Barwani, Local Partner of BSA, together with other senior members of management from The Zubair Corporation, Zubair SEC, and BSA.

SMEs owners often lack access to sufficient knowledge sources concerning the legal aspects of their work, which in turn negatively affects their chances of succeeding as a profitable and sustainable business. This joint initiative is aimed at providing such individuals and SMEs with effective solutions for the legal complexities and problems they face in the country. Commenting on the signing of this initiative, Mundhir Al Barwani said, “Our firm has achieved great success at a regional level since its establishment in 2001. Over these past few years, we received several legal issues related to emerging enterprises and businesses. A majority of these legal cases stemmed from the fact that owners were not familiar with the legal aspects and official requirements relating to their area of business or from not being able to pay for expensive consultations. It is from these cases that we came up with the idea for this social initiative. It helped create the perfect platform from which we could offer such consultations free of charge as part of our community activities. In order to activate this initiative, we have signed a MoU with Zubair SEC, a company that has made significant strides in helping support SMEs over these past few years.”

Commenting on their cooperation with BSA, Ziyad Al Zubair said, “Zubair SEC has attracted more than 950 members, each of whom own SMEs, over these past five years. We have provided them with management, financial, and marketing consultation together with financial grants as part of our Direct Support Programme. However, during this time, legal consultations proved themselves to be the most complicated to tackle. This is why we have cooperated with BSA to try and offer effective solutions for those facing such challenges. BSA is a well-renowned law firm that has the necessary expertise to offer top-grade professional legal consultancy to a sector as vital as SMEs.”

Commenting on the type of consultations that will be offered at the workshop and legal clinic, Abdulaziz Al Rashdi said, “We have up to 110 lawyers across all offices legal experts and experienced lawyers working at BSA covering all specialities, including contracts and commercial agreements, corporate law, taxes, labour law, and commercial disputes, among others. It is their expertise that qualifies us to provide effective legal consultations for SMEs; which in Oman is numbered at close to 35,000, as per the official statistics published by Public Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Riyada). This is the first BSA Workshop and Legal Clinic to be held in Oman, and will serve as a real value-added service for local SMEs, especially given the normally high costs associated with professional consultations.”

The Workshop and Legal Clinic will be taking place on the 15th of January 2019 at Bait Al Zubair with the participation of 11 lawyers and legal experts from BSA. These lawyers and legal experts will each offer an average of seven hours of free legal consultation for attendees who own SMEs in Oman. This will total up to 77 free hours of specialised legal consultations.

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