Lawgical #313 - ADGM framework for bankruptcy in the UAE

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]And then, so we've got the UAE federal law bankruptcy law and you've got the DIFC and we've got in Abu Dhabi we have the equivalent sort of of the DIFC the Dubai International Financial Centre.

[00:00:09]It's the Abu Dhabi Global Markets. So, it's once again, but it's all it's own independent legal system. It's also common law jurisdiction with its own ADGM courts also applying English common law directly. And they've got their own insolvency regulations from 2022 and modeled very closely on the UK Insolvency Act and so similar to the the to the DIFC they include administration company voluntary arrangement receivership and winding winding up. And so, they too have adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency. So, um uh ADGM quite interestingly is this sort of maybe those who followed these kind this this topic would have might have might have noticed that ADGM was involved particularly in the context of a recent kind of fairly uh fairly [snorts] high-profile bankruptcy case in the UAE which involved NMC Health with around 4 billion of undisclosed debt revealed in 2020 and it was ADGM that was used sort of as a conduit for debt recovery. And so, at the time the UAE operated entities were continued into ADGM specifically to access the administration regime and that was because we didn't really have our own bankruptcy law on kind of on mainland that would have helped creditors in the way that ADGM had the option to help.