GATE
ONE VENTURES MEASURES ITS SUCCESS ONLY BY THE
SUCCESS OF ITS CLIENTS
Leading companies and entrepreneurs rely upon GATE ONE across the M.E.N.A. region
for narrowly tailored market entry and expansion advice.
GATE ONE VENTURES is not a traditional advisory firm. Leading companies and entrepreneurs rely upon GATE ONE VENTURES for narrowly tailored expertise on target companies, or target financing sources in Morocco and throughout the M.E.N.A. region. Where many business consultancy firms too often waste the clients’ financial resources with promises of rewards from offices maintained outside the targeted regions, GATE ONE VENTURES seizes upon opportunities from within the M.E.N.A. marketplace, to meet or exceed ROI and profitability targets of its clients within tightly constrained time-frames.
GATE ONE VENTURES maintains a network of regionally acclaimed consultancy firms – including investment advisors, law firms and accountancy firms - to provide comprehensive solutions for the strategic plans it fashions in tandem with its clients.
GATE ONE VENTURES ultimate goal is to strengthen the chances of client companies and entrepreneurs hitting their projected return on investments made across the M.E.N.A. region.
John L. Habib serves as the President and General Counsel of Gate One Ventures. A business executive who is also an attorney licensed to practice in 4 U.S. jurisdictions, Mr. Habib bridges complex business strategy, legal and cultural issues to achieve uncommon successes for GATE ONE VENTURES’ clients. Mr. Habib has conducted business in the broader Middle East region since 1990. He relocated to Abu Dhabi in 2005 to serve as the Managing Partner of the Middle East/North Africa Practice Group of a boutique U.S.-based law firm specializing in the representation of clients active in the MENA region. Mr. Habib is a registered arbitration panelist with the Commercial Conciliation and Arbitration Centre of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and has years of litigation experience complementing his commercial transactions background.
Within the Abu Dhabi business community, Mr. Habib has served as an executive officer for the past three (3) years with the American Business Group of Abu Dhabi, which is a formally recognized chapter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce based in Washington, D.C. He assumed the Presidency of the ABG on September 1, 2008, having previously served as the Vice President of Legal Affairs and later the Executive Vice President of the ABG from 2006-2008.
Mr. Habib has spent over a decade within the executive management of private manufacturing companies. He presently serves as a Board of Directors member and Outside General Counsel of his family-owned textile manufacturing company with 250+ employees. From 2000-2005, he held various executive management positions for a consumer products manufacturer having sales in excess of US$175,000,000, including the following:
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General Counsel, supervising all legal and regulatory issues impacting business operations and real estate investment portfolios ;
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Business Unit President, responsible for all manufacturing, distribution, marketing and global sales operations.
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Vice President of Sales, managing domestic and international sales teams, nominating and supervising agents and distributors, implementing training programs and meeting revenue and profitability targets.
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Vice President of Acquisitions and Alliances, responsible for researching and targeting industry partners and assets, conducting negotiations, and structuring the documentation of transactions. and,
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Board of Directors Member For Industry Trade Associations,overseeing fiscal, operational and legal issues for the benefit of association members.
Mr. Habib is a commercial pragmatist, connecting professionally and personally with business executives across diverse cultures, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. Mr. Habib’s volunteer activities reflect GATE ONE VENTURES emphasis on corporate social responsibility programs and public service. He serves as the U.A.E. Legal Advisor for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), a 501c3 not-for-profit U.S. company which provides free medical care and support services to children throughout the Middle East. In Abu Dhabi, he serves as a volunteer advisor to the Future Centre, one of the U.A.E.’s most progressive academic institutions serving children of special needs.
Mr. Habib received his undergraduate degree at Colgate University in New York, majoring in Political Science and International Relations, and he received his law degree from Emory University School of Law in Georgia, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Emory International Law Review. Following his admission to the New York State and District of Columbia Bar Associations, he worked in private law firms in the United States and Middle East for 10 years as a corporate transactions and civil litigation attorney. In the course of his career, he served as an Associate Attorney within the International Practice Group of +300 attorney law firm maintaining 5 branch offices across the United States, was also admitted to practice in the states of Maryland and Arizona, represented clients before state and federal court judges, and was seconded to a Middle Eastern law firm representing local and international clients. His practice routinely involved the retention and supervision of local Arab law firms teaming on commercial law and company registration matters throughout the M.E.N.A. region.
Elisabetta Racca
Head of legal department, responsible for litigation in Italy and at the European Court of First Instance and the European Court of Justice, and for licenses, contracts and legal advice, Arbitration and Conciliation.
She graduated with a law degree from the University of Turin (1993) with a thesis on Italian and German antitrust law, supervisor Prof. Aldo Frignani. During her university studies she attended specialisation courses in comparative law at the International Faculty of Comparative Law in Strasbourg, France, and also attended two semesters at the Faculty of Law at the University of Saarbücken, Germany. After her degree she obtained a Masters in German Law at the Ludwig Maximilian Universität of Munich under the supervision on Professor Peter Schloßer. In 1995 she spent a period in Germany at the Legal Division of the European Patent Office as a visiting lawyer. In 1996 she attended specialisation courses in the United States at the of WashingtonLawSchool, Seattle. She is regularly a speaker at conferences on different matters. She is often interviewed by journalists of Italian daily national newspapers for comments on events relating to industrial property. Before joining the N&G group in Milan, as their legal representative and the head of the legal department, she worked with leading Italian and foreign firms specialising in corporate and commercial law. Thanks to the considerable experience gained over the years in Italy and abroad she is able to expertly address and resolve the widest variety of national and international issues for Italian and foreign clients.
Miss Racca speaks four languages: Italian (native language), English, German and French. She is also a Honorary Member in the Association of Fellows and Legal Scholars of the Center for International Legal Studies.
Since April 2008 she is partner of the UAE based legal consultancy firm G&R Legal Consultancy, Abu Dhabi.
She is arbitrator and conciliator at the Abu Dhabi Commercial Conciliation and Arbitration Centre.
