Manuela Belmontes

Manuela is a partner of Maples and Calder’s Corporate and Finance teams in the Maples Group’s Dubai office. Manuela’s main areas of practice are international capital markets and finance (principally aircraft finance, Islamic finance, structured finance and banking).  She has worked on a number of notable sukuk transactions and other Islamic compliant financings, conventional debt offerings and debt issuance programmes as well as bespoke securitisations for clients based in the Middle East, Europe and North America.  Manuela regularly advises on aircraft finance transactions for aircraft carriers and leasing companies in the Middle East.  Manuela also has broad experience in the establishment and maintenance of a variety of Cayman Islands investment structures and funds, and regularly advises on general corporate and commercial matters, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate reorganisations and joint venture arrangements.

Manuela joined the Maples Group’s Dubai office in 2007 and was elected as a partner in 2015.  Prior to that, she worked with a law firm in the Cayman Islands, with Clifford Chance LLP in London and with Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP in Toronto.  Manuela has been ranked as a Band 1 lawyer by Chambers Global, where she continues to receive high praise for her finance practice, and has been named as a leading lawyer by Islamic Finance News.  She is also described as “excellent” and ranked as a Next Generation Lawyer by Legal 500, named as an “external counsel of the year” for the UAE by Asian-Mena Counsel Magazine and recognised as one of the IFLR1000 Women Leaders 2024.