ISFIRE PERSONALITY
ADIL HUSSAIN Partner and Global Head of Islamic Finance at Clyde & Co
Adil Hussain, Partner and Global Head of Islamic Finance at Clyde & Co, is the ISFIRE Personality of the December issue. He is an accomplished lawyer with wide-ranging experience of structuring Islamic financial transactions. Clyde & Co was the proud winner of the Best Law Firm in Islamic Finance for the Year 2019 at the recently held 9th Global Islamic Finance Awards held in Cape Town, South Africa. In this brief interview, we ask him some personal and Islamic finance related questions.
PLEASE SHARE WITH OUR READERS HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN ISLAMIC FINANCE. My route into Islamic finance was slightly unconventional, although in recent years I have seen many other lawyers take a similar path. I actually qualified into the real estate department of a City law firm and had no knowledge about the Islamic finance world. I first discovered Islamic finance two-years post qualification when I was required to assist with conveyancing work where the purchaser was taking out an Islamic mortgage. I was immediately fascinated by the structure, documentation and the Islamic finance sector as a whole. Discovering Islamic finance came at the perfect time for me, as I was losing interest in the real estate work that I was doing at the time. I decided to apply for junior Islamic finance roles, which all happened to be in the Middle East. At the time, I thought that it was going to be impossible for me to find a suitable
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role, as each position advertised required prior Islamic finance experience and my experience was limited. However, perseverance paid off and I was eventually offered an Islamic finance associate role in Bahrain at a leading international law firm.
IF YOUR 18-YEAR-OLD SELF FINDS YOU DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW PROFESSIONALLY, WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN HIS REACTION? Wow, this is a difficult question. I am not quite sure if I can remember what I was like at 18. It was so long ago! However, I was not in a good place. My mother, who was only in her early forties, had just suffered a severe stroke, and I had decided not to take my A levels that year. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with her and to assist in her recovery. With this context in mind, I hope the 18-year-old Adil, would also be as grateful as I am
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