Reed Smith has boosted its corporate offering in Saudi Arabia with the hire of partners Mohammed Alammar and Anmar Algharifi and an associate from local boutique AlAmmar Law.
The trio bring significant corporate experience to the Riyadh office Reed Smith launched last year with newly-hired disputes partner Emad Alshaikhi and media and entertainment lawyer Gregor Pryor, the firm’s Europe and Middle East managing partner who was seconded from London. With the new hires, the office – Reed Smith’s third in the Middle East after Abu Dhabi and Dubai – will have seven lawyers.
Alammar founded his eponymous law firm in 2006 having been a counsel at King & Spalding and advises clients across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council on corporate matters, projects and infrastructure, PPP, real estate, investment funds and finance.
He counts high-profile Middle East government, PE and VC firms among his clients, including Gulf Investment Corporation, Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Ventures and Audi Capital. He has also advised on the corporate and construction aspects of projects for NEOM – the planned city being built in Saudi’s Tabuk province that was launched in 2017 by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
Meanwhile, Algharifi has more than 20 years’ experience advising on public and private M&A, joint ventures, capital markets, private equity, corporate structuring and foreign investment matters. He also advises family investment offices on regional and global investments, governance and compliance.
He was a partner at Eversheds Sutherland and Dubai-based firm MAS Law before joining AlAmmar Law in 2023.
Mike Young, head of Reed Smith’s EMEA corporate group, said the hires were “a key step” in the expansion of the firm’s corporate practice across Europe and the Middle East.
“Mohammed and Anmar add transactional depth across M&A, private equity and strategic investments, strengthening our ability to execute cross-border mandates for regional and international clients,” he added.
Reed Smith cited a “solid performance” by its private equity practice as one of the driving forces behind its revenue reaching a new high of nearly $1.6bn in 2025, when profit per equity partner also rose 11.3% to a record $2m.
Alongside the Riyadh launch, the firm also opened in Denver and Atlanta last year and Boston earlier this month, taking its global network to 34 offices.
Reed Smith’s Saudi launch followed the kingdom changing its code of law practice back in 2023 to enable foreign firms to set up their own practices without the constraints of a local partner. The change came with a number of conditions, including that 70% of a firm’s lawyers must be Saudi nationals.
Dozens of leading US and UK law firms have opened offices in the kingdom or applied to do so since the rule changes, as Saudi Arabia has become increasingly important for clients, although the Iran conflict, which is now in its fifth week, is threatening to inflict lasting damage on the region’s economies.
The Saudi government’s Vision 2030 project to diversify its economy away from dependency on oil has seen it launch $1.3trn in real estate and infrastructure projects alone over the past eight years, Bloomberg reported.
Many law firms, like Latham & Watkins, Clifford Chance and Linklaters, had previously operated there through associations with local outfits, while others, including Greenberg Traurig and CMS, have entered the market for the first time.
Since last summer, Freshfields, Morgan Lewis and Akin have also marked Saudi launches, with Akin announcing last week it had hired corporate partner Ibrahim Siddiki from Addleshaw Goddard as co-managing partner of its Riyadh office. Earlier this month, Gibson Dunn recruited Linklaters’ Saudi Arabia managing partner, Waleed Rasrommani, to grow its presence in Riyadh.
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