In-house interview: Dominic Selwood, Arabesque Asset Management

Arabesque Asset Management founder and general counsel Dominic Selwood launched his career as a barrister at 2 King’s Bench Walk in 1996. Since then he has held a variety of roles in the legal industry and elsewhere in financial services, giving him a breadth of experience and level of market knowledge few can boast.

Early in his career Selwood worked as an in-house barrister at Allen & Overy before moving into the financial sector with roles at Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital.

However, the allure of working at an interesting start-up company has often pulled him away from the security associated with working for a large multinational bank.

“Having been a barrister initially and self-employed, I get quite excited about the independence of running my own legal world around me,” he says. “Having the opportunity to create a legal department in a start-up, with all the opportunities for contributing across the business – which is inevitable in a start-up – was attractive.”

Selwood was co-founder of Arabesque in 2013 when the investment management company was formed through a management buyout from Barclays Capital, where he had been global head of Islamic products since 2010.

Arabesque CEO Omar Selim gained experience as Barclays’ head of global markets for institutional clients in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe.

Arabesque aims to combine Islamic investment principles with responsible values covering environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

“Everything we do with regard to ESG is important to us and our set-up reflects that,” says Selwood. “There’s nothing offshore, nothing nearshore and nothing sheltered. The whole firm – all of the set-up and all its funds – are onshore, fully regulated and fully taxed.”

All-round understanding

Although Arabesque’s legal team is made up of only two lawyers, Selwood’s dual role as founding partner and general counsel means he is in a unique position to combine the business’s legal advice with its wider strategy.

“I also do a lot of work representing the firm with our senior clients and our senior relationships,” says Selwood. “That keeps me close to the business and what it’s doing. It means the legal side is automatically bound in to any strategic or business development decisions.”

As an asset management company, legal work is vital to Arabesque’s business. Selwood, along with legal counsel Haliza Abd Rahim, is involved in two main areas of work. The first revolves around the technicalities of structuring funds, which includes the composition of funds and fund vehicles. The second concerns regulatory issues related to the marketing and distribution of the funds themselves.

However, due to the varied roles Selwood has held he also understands how the legal function affects the roles of his colleagues.

“Because I’ve done the jobs many people in the business are doing – I’ve been on the structuring side, the sales side and the business development side – I’m aware of what people do on a day-to-day basis.”

Small team, big satisfaction

One of the major differences Selwood has noticed since leaving Barclays Capital is the size of the teams he works with. Banks such as Barclays unsurprisingly have much larger teams than start-ups such as Arabesque, which has a total headcount of 25.

For Selwood, having a smaller team has a number of benefits.

“Obviously, working in a small team brings different responsibilities, pressures and excitements,” he says. “It’s an entirely different world to a large organisation such as a multinational investment bank – one in which individuals in the legal team get the opportunity to learn fast, take on enormous responsibility and get the satisfaction of seeing things happen.”

The smaller size of the business also means that Arabesque uses fewer external advisers. In the UK Selwood’s go-to firm is Simmons & Simmons, while the business is advised by Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek in Germany.

“Working in a small team brings different responsibilities, pressures and excitements”

Although Arabesque focuses on these two lead firms, Selwood admits that when advice is needed in other jurisdictions he will run a beauty parade to see who can offer “the best expertise at the best value”.

Selwood’s forays outside the legal industry have not been limited to his roles at Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital. He is also an Amazon best-selling author after publishing his first book The Sword of Moses, which he describes as a “Dan Brown-type action thriller”.

Selwood is a commentator on historical subjects too, and writes for The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator in the run-up to important anniversaries.

With his second book due to be published at the end of the year, Selwood’s name may be one you keep on reading.