Naila Ramsay

Partner Sharkawy & Sarhan View profile

Naila is a partner with Sharkawy & Sarhan law firm and spends her time between Cairo and London in order to extend the reach of the firm more internationally and to provide clients with a regular presence in Europe. She has over 20 years’ experience in advising on crossborder project finance and infrastructure in the EMEA region in multiple sectors. She is result oriented, multilingual, and multicultural with experience in origination, asset creation and execution as legal adviser, investor, and developer. Having spent several years as a project finance Lawyer predominantly with Linklaters in London and Paris, Naila has been involved in a range of projects acting for sponsors, lenders, and Governments. From the law she transitioned successfully to an investment bank, Babcock & Brown, as a senior transactor in UK PFI and Public Private Partnerships more generally.

This role involved bidding, managing, and closing large social infrastructure projects with complicated contractual structures and interface issues. It included bidding for the early phase of the PPP pipeline in Egypt both with Babcock & Brown and with the Hassan Allam Group. Naila interacted on a regular basis with the PPP Unit, under the umbrella of the Ministry of Finance. These varied but complimentary roles have provided her with a special insight into the commercial and contractual challenges inherent to these types of transactions, especially in the UK and Egypt.

At Sharkawy & Sarhan, Naila is responsible for strategic client relationship management and development, Diversity, Inclusion and Equity in addition to advising on infrastructure and concession-based transactions.

More recently, she has been involved in renewable energy transactions, ports and port related infrastructure and the budding green hydrogen sector.