BACKAline heads the Firm’s Arbitration practice, and has been in charge of numerous arbitration proceedings, both as counsel or arbitrator, notably before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Beirut Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) and the Dubai International Arbitration Center (DIAC). She is a member of the ICC Arab Arbitration Group and Arbitral Women.
She has extensive experience of more than 20 years in company and commercial law, including securitizations, issuances of preferred shares, GDRs and subordinated bonds, as well as experience in drafting the constitutions of financial institutions and opening representative offices of foreign banks. Her expertise also includes drafting shareholders’ agreements, partnership agreements and other contracts, particularly for supermarket chains, malls, distributors, financial institutions and NGOs.
For many years, she has been trusted to carry out due diligence proceedings on behalf of established companies and start-ups, working on their set-up and follow-up, opening branches and REP offices thereof, and mergers and acquisitions operations. She has also served as counsel on aviation matters, representing airlines and their insurers in order to settle disputes with families of airplane crash victims. She took part in the legal verification of the Arabic version of the foreign investment legal framework in Cuba.
She is active in the legal society and has been part of a great number of arbitration conferences organized by the ICC, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Cuban Lebanese Economic Forum. Notable recent appearances include the conference organized by the ICC Young Arbitrators’ Forum titled “Nuts and Bolts of International Arbitration – Selecting the Seat” on July 2017 in Beirut, as well as the conferences on “La Réforme du Code de Commerce Libanais” and “Investing Withdrawn US Dollars in Successful Lebanese Companies: The Advantages of Preferred Shares” between 2018 and 2019, the hybrid conference held in Beirut by ICC YAAF- Eptalex “Repeat appointment of arbitrators: Much ado about nothing?” and the ICC- Union of Arab Banks joint conference held in Paris “The Use of Arbitration and ADR in International Banking and Trade Sectors” in 2023.
Since 2012, Aline has been a lecturer of Commercial Law at Saint-Joseph University- Beirut.
She is a regular contributor to literary outlets including Le Commerce du Levant, and specialized academic journals such as the ICC Bulletin and The American Review of International Arbitration of Columbia Law School.
She was admitted to the Beirut Bar Association in 2007.
