Helen Elmer is an English-qualified associate in the Dubai office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She is a member of the firm’s International Arbitration and Litigation practice groups. She has practiced in London, Dubai and Hong Kong.
Helen specialises in international arbitration and complex commercial litigation. She represents clients in relation to M&A disputes, investment disputes, infrastructure and energy disputes, and matters involving fraud and white-collar crime. Helen acts in arbitrations under all of the major institutional rules. She has broad experience, including litigation at the interlocutory, trial and appellate levels, before the High Court of England & Wales, the Privy Council, and defending proceedings brought in the UAE. She has also acted on multiple high-value arbitrations across jurisdictions, both for and against sovereign and private entities. She has acted for a broad range of clients including multinational corporations, construction firms, investment firms and sovereign governments.
Helen trained at Gibson Dunn. She was admitted as a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales in 2018 and received rights of audience before the Civil Higher Courts in 2023. She has spent seven years working in the firm’s London office and one year working in the Hong Kong office.
Recent Representations Include:
Arbitration
- Acting for a major international engineering company in multi-billion-dollar ICC proceedings against a Middle Eastern state arising from an airport project;
- Acting for a large multinational corporation in a US$ 1.8 billion SIAC proceeding relating to the completion of an M&A transaction under Cayman and Delaware law;
- Defending a sovereign state in a US$ 3 billion Singapore-seated commercial and investment dispute relating to a key piece of railway infrastructure;
- Defending ICSID annulment proceedings brought by the Kingdom of Spain against an award under the Energy Charter Treaty; and
- Providing pre-litigation and strategic advice for a multinational oil and gas company in connection with a joint venture.
Litigation
- Defending an appeal in the Privy Council upholding the findings of the Cayman Grand Court and Cayman Court of Appeal in a US$ 130 million hedge fund fraud trial;
- Defending a claim brought in Dubai relating to two hedge funds, including seeking declaratory relief in the Cayman Islands and related enforcement proceedings;
- Pursuing applications for registration and enforcement of foreign judgements including investigations into the location of assets in England, the United States and the Middle East;
- Pursuing applications on behalf of a Saudi backed venture to give effect to letters of request for document production and depositions;
- Advising on injunctive relief in the High Court in relation to a US$ 100 million employment related dispute;
- Advising a court in the UAE on new court rules and procedures;
- Assisting a large construction company on interviews under the Insolvency Act following the administration of a contractor; and
- Advising on a misrepresentation claim for a multi-million pound dispute relating to the purchase of a property in England.
Investigations
- Advising a top UK housebuilder in relation to an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority into suspected breaches under Chapter I of the Competition Act 1998 relating to concerns about the exchange of competitively sensitive information;
- Advising a multinational telecommunications and media corporation on an internal investigation relating to accounting;
- Advising on the merger of Uber and Grab in relation to competition investigation proceedings in Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam; and
- Advising on multiple investigations into fraud and white-collar crime for clients with subsidiaries in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and India.
Capabilities
Credentials
Education:
- BPP Law School - 2016 Legal Practice Course
- Kaplan Law School - 2014 Graduate Diploma in Law
- University of Oxford - 2013 Bachelor of Arts
Admissions:
- England & Wales - Solicitor
News & Insights
Client Alert
2020 Mid-Year FCPA Update