Date: 30/11/2021
Language: English
Format: Online
No payment required.
Registration deadline: 29/11/2021
Justice Montagu-Smith KC was called to the Bar of England and Wales (Lincoln’s Inn) in 2001 and was appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 2017.
He practices as a barrister from 3 Verulam Buildings, a barristers’ chambers in London, and practices in London and internationally including in the British Virgin Islands and Dubai, having appeared in many of the leading cases at the Dubai International Financial Centre Courts. He has specialist expertise in international commercial law, arbitration, commercial fraud, insurance and reinsurance, construction, and professional negligence. He was the principle draftsman of the Rules of the AIFC Court.
He was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford University, where he read Politics, Philosophy, and Economics and graduated in 1999. He read for the Postgraduate Diploma in Law at the College of Law in 2000 and read for the Bar Vocational Course at the College of Law in 2001.
Mr. Christopher Campbell-Holt OBE
Registrar & Chief Executive
Mr. Campbell-Holt is responsible for the day to day management and administration of the Court and case management of litigation before the Court. He is also the Enforcement Judge at the Court. He managed the establishment of the Court and International Arbitration Centre at the AIFC from initial concept to stand-alone premier international dispute resolution institutions. He has advised on international financial centre and dispute resolution development in the Middle East, Eurasia, Asia, Africa, and South America. He has more than 20 years of international legal experience. He was the Registrar at a similar court in Qatar and worked at Norton Rose Fulbright LLP and at a Middle East law firm partnered with Covington & Burling LLP.
He studied Law at University College London and is admitted to the Bar of New York State. He is a CEDR accredited mediator, Member at the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and Chartered Institute of Directors life-time Member. He is a board member and/or governor of numerous institutions. He is an Honorary and/or Adjunct Professor at two universities. He has been awarded honours, including by His Majesty King Charles III in 2025 with an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for services to the rule of law and English common law, and by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2022 with The Order of Friendship (Dostyq ordeni), the highest level state award of the Republic of Kazakhstan that can be awarded to non-Kazakh citizens, and in 2020 with The Jubilee Medal.
