Seminars

Richard Ellis is the Advisor, Banking Supervision at the Central Bank of Bahrain.

Mr. Ellis has worked for a total of four central banks, including the Central Bank of Kuwait, the Central Bank of the Bahamas and the Bank of England. During this time he has worked in banking supervision, primarily on the drafting and implementation of regulatory policy and more latterly anti-money laundering measures, complemented by work in on and off-site supervision.

He has also worked in the private sector in the regulatory practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and in the retail and corporate divisions of HSBC.

Mr. Ellis is a member of the CBB's Basel 2 Implementation Task Force, and the team that is producing the CBB's new Investment Business Rulebook. He also oversaw the compilation of the Conventional and Islamic Banks Prudential Rulebooks at the CBB in 2004 and 2005 which included the CBB's enhanced requirements for corporate governance of banks.

Martin joined the DFSA in September 2006 as Senior Manager in the Authorisation Department and was promoted to Associate Director in July 2007. He is responsible for the team processing banking and brokerage applications.

Martin has spent his entire career working in the financial services sector. This included time at banking and insurance firms, where he held a range of positions, and from 1995 until moving to Dubai he was employed at the UK Financial Services Authority. He carried out a number of supervisory and other roles at the FSA, and most recently he managed the team responsible for the assessment of "non-routine" individual applications.

Martin holds degrees in History and in Law, and has also completed a post-graduate qualification in Legal Practice.

Aryan Schoorl is a senior counsel in our Dubai office and is a member of our financial services regulatory practice. Aryan has a wide range of regulatory and market infrastructure experience in both Europe and the Middle East. He frequently advises on Middle-East financial services and capital markets regulation.

Aryan joined the firm from the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), where he was a senior regulator. He also worked for the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). His roles included the international supervision of Euronext markets (cash and derivatives), expert group membership of the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR), the authorisation and supervision of the Dubai International Financial Exchange (DIFX) and the authorisation of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME).

Prior to his regulatory roles, Aryan was a capital markets and financial services lawyer, advising corporates and financial institutions on primary and secondary markets as well as ontentious and non-contentious regulatory matters. Aryan was admitted to the Bar in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1999. He was educated at the Universities of Amsterdam and Berlin (Germany) and he holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree.