MAISA ALSAIDI

Maisa is the founder and Managing Partner of Equine Legal Consultancy, the first Middle East firm specialised in providing legal services to equestrians, professionals and businesses in the equine industry. Maisa has worked on a major appeal before the Federation of Equestrian International Tribunal representing a large number of national and international horse show jumping athletes in addition to the representation of more than 70 equestrians in the UAE in a message to the FEI president on one of the most challenging equestrian cases that have affected equestrians and businesses in the UAE.

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Maisa has an in-depth corporate experience representing various clients in the region in restructuring their businesses and in mergers and acquisitions. Lately Maisa helped with the joint venture between her client AquaChemie DMCC and Kurita Europe GmbH to form a new entity to serve the specialty chemical market in the GCC region pegged at US$350 million.

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Maisa has also founded and managed iRights to work on the formation of the first music rights association in the Middle East. iRights provides consultancy and legal advice to  companies and individuals in the media sector.  iRights represents all music right holders (worldwide) who have their music played or performed publicly in the UAE.

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Prior to the formation of iRights, Maisa worked as a the General Counsel of Alif Alif Media Group. Alif Alif Media Group is a Saudi media group that operates TV, radio, production house and print media. The group is owned by His Royal Highness Prince Khalid Al Faisal and, based on his Royal Highness vision, the group focuses on Saudi affairs, heritage and modern development. In addition to her main role as a General Counsel, Maisa was a member of the management team and worked closely with other business units.

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Before joining Alif Alif Media Group, Maisa worked as a the Director of Legal Affairs at Arab Media Group (AMG) and was a member of the steering committee. During her employment with AMG, she had advised other departments and group entities on all legal aspects, overseen corporate and media related matters and worked on several transactions. Maisa had worked as an in-house counsel at the MBC Group, one of the largest media companies in the Middle East. She had also worked as a legal consultant at Afridi & Angell, one of the leading law firms in the UAE.

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EXPERIENCE

• Advising on Sports related matters including dispute resolution, mediation and disciplinary related issues.

• Representing athletes before local and international federations and sports governing bodies.

• Advising national sports federations on regulatory related matters.

• Negotiating Sport related agreements such as events organization, sponsorship, athletes and team management, venue lease, agency, franchise and broadcast/streaming rights.

• Drafting, advising and negotiating all kinds of media related deals such as program acquisitions, production, commissioning, co-production, format licensing, merchandising and new media agreements

• Preparing and negotiating music related deals (e.g. music acquisition, buy out of all rights, artist management agreement, service agreements, etc.)

• Providing advise and consultancy on commercial deals such as sale and purchase agreements, franchise agreements and barter agreements.

• Drafting and advising on IT agreements (e.g. service level agreements, software licensing agreements and hardware and software purchase agreements).

• Managing IP related work for iRights' clients such as trademarks, patents, trade secret and copyrights

• Providing consultancy on corporate legal matters including joint ventures, shareholders agreements, acquisitions and corporate restructuring.

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EDUCATION

• LLB in Law, University of Jordan

• Member of the Jordanian Bar Association 

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LANGUAGES

Arabic, English and French.