As widely reported, the UAE government announced on 1 April 2015 that the new UAE Commercial Companies Law (Federal Law No. 2 of 2015) had been passed into law.

The new Law is contained in Federal Official Gazette No. 577, which has a publication date of 31 March 2015.  The new Law comes into effect after three months from the date of publication in the Official Gazette, giving an implementation date of 1 July.

From a detailed comparison of the Arabic text of the new Law (as gazetted) and the draft law which was widely circulated in 2013, we can confirm that there have been no changes made during the legislative process.

The Federal Official Gazette also contains a new Cabinet Resolution (No. 9 of 2015) which consolidates laws relevant to the fees of the Ministry of Economy into one Resolution.  This is a welcome streamlining of the legislation.  The new Resolution, therefore, covers fees for registration of commercial agencies, a range of intellectual property rights and establishment registration fees, such as the registration of a branch of a foreign company on the foreign companies register.

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