Hourani & Partners announced that Julia Snyder will become a partner in its Corporate and M&A group, with the appointment taking effect on Monday, September 7, 2026. Snyder comes to the Dubai office after serving as senior-vice-president of the legal department at Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).
Snyder previously spent six years with the firm’s earlier affiliate and later with Hourani & Partners in Dubai, joining as a senior associate in 2017, advancing to counsel in 2019, and leaving for PIF in 2023. While at the Public Investment Fund, she counseled on several of the fund’s major overseas investments, helping to execute strategic, cross-border transactions and handling a variety of complex deals.
Snyder returns to private practice with first-hand knowledge of how institutional clients frame requests and what makes a response useful. Chadi Hourani, managing partner of Hourani & Partners, said, “Julia’s return is a proud moment for all of us at Hourani & Partners.
She was a respected teammate for six years before an impressive stint at PIF, where she gained rare experience advising on detailed international M&A from the investor’s side. She adds a mix of law-firm excellence and investor perspective that bolsters the firm’s counsel to institutional clients, family businesses and multinational enterprises across a broad range of industries in the region.
Julia Snyder said, “My time in-house reinforced that the most valuable external counsel understand how their advice fits into the broader transaction and what the client is trying to achieve. Clients need clear recommendations, not simply a range of legally available options, and advisers who engage early enough to help shape the question rather than simply answer it.”
Snyder’s appointment is the firm’s second lateral partner hire this year, following Daniel Xu, who joined from Eversheds Sutherland in January 2026 to lead the Arbitration practice. She will join the team overseen by Salim Sader, partner and head of corporate and M&A, which advises on mergers, joint ventures, corporate restructurings and corporate-governance matters throughout the Middle East.
Salim Sader commented, “I’m very happy to welcome Julia back to the firm. She brings real depth and experience to the M&A practice where they continue to see significant growth, as well as the seniority and judgment to lead some of the most important client relationships.”
