Who We Serve

Who do we serve? It's the question we hear in every first conversation.

This is our first attempt at an answer. Four kinds of foreign company come through our door, each with its own story about Iraq.

Let's Talk What we do

Iraq is not a country where we can hand you a fixed menu and ask you to choose. Every company we meet has its own story — different sector, different timing, sometimes a pressure that demands speed, sometimes a patience that allows for care. The first thing we do is not propose a solution. The first thing we do is listen.

Still, since 2005, we have noticed that the people who come through our door usually fall into one of four patterns. It is not a rigid taxonomy — it is a set of recurring features.

First-time entrants

Companies meeting Iraq for the first time.

These are the ones we see most. Industrial, commercial, or service companies that have been studying the market from a distance for months and have finally decided to move. They have no registered entity yet, no team on the ground, not even an address to receive mail at.

What stalls people at this stage usually isn't the law. It's the sheer number of decisions they need to make before anything can settle. What entity type fits the sector? Do we need an Iraqi partner or not? Where do we open the bank account? How long does registration actually take? When can we start hiring?

We answer those in the order that suits you — not the order textbooks list them in. Then we do what's needed: incorporate the right structure, secure the site, handle sector licensing, set up banking and accounting. You deal with one person from us. We handle the rest.

Investors looking from a distance

Capital placed into Iraq, not life moved here.

The second pattern is different. They are not entering the market to operate in it day to day; they are investing in it. A land purchase. A stake in an existing company. A partnership in a joint venture. Financing for a real estate development.

What worries an investor isn't what worries an operator. The operator wants to open and run. The investor wants to be sure that what they are paying for matches what is actually on the ground, and that there is a way out if things go sideways.

In Iraq specifically, the gap between a clean-on-paper title and what is actually there is not theoretical. Land that looks unencumbered in the registry can turn out to be the subject of a family dispute, mortgaged to a third party, or overlapping with a neighbor's parcel. So our diligence is field-and-document together, never desk-only. And the contracts we draft do not stop at elegant language meant to please an outside counsel — they include workable exit and dispute clauses, because we have seen what happens when those clauses are missing.

The ones executing on the ground

Contractors and engineers building real things.

The third pattern is contractors and engineers. An infrastructure project. An oil or gas field. Telecom towers. A power station. Whether contracted to a government body or a private client, their file looks nothing like the previous two.

These companies don't get by on a paper presence. They have a site in Basra or Faw or Nineveh. They have equipment coming through customs. They have foreign employees who need housing and Iraqi employees who need social-security registration. And they have the daily details only people who have actually done it understand — a field permit renewal, a dispute with a sub-contractor, a labor issue at a remote site, a security procedure that wasn't in any briefing.

For this pattern, we figured out years ago that the engineer and the lawyer have to be in the same room. Legal interpretation alone isn't enough. Engineering judgment alone isn't enough. What works on the ground is the two of them, talking through the gap between what the contract says and what's actually happening.

The ones expanding, not launching

Multinationals adding Iraq to a working operation.

The fourth pattern is service firms — technology, consulting, logistics, financial, education, healthcare. They have an office in Amman or Dubai or Istanbul, and the operations there are mature. Iraq isn't a beginning for them; it's a market that complements what they already have.

Their challenge is different. Not 'how do we enter,' but 'how do we stay compliant from a distance.' Taxes due monthly. Annual filings on tight deadlines. License renewals. Iraqi employee matters. Banking transfers. And every month, some small regulatory shift no one had on their radar.

For these clients, we play the role an in-house legal department plays in larger companies. Monthly follow-through. A note when something changes. Someone in Baghdad they can call when they need to. We do not reinvent their structure each time. We tend to it.

A note, before we go further

Who we don't work with.

Not everyone who comes through the door is someone we can — or want to — work with. Being plain about that serves everyone.

We don't work in individual residential real estate. Our focus is commercial, industrial, and agricultural.
We don't take a percentage of deal value. Fees tied to outcomes can quietly bias the advice we give without anyone noticing.
We don't help anyone working around Iraqi law, regardless of how the request is framed.
We don't act against former clients. What is entrusted to us stays with us — including after the engagement ends.

These aren't principles we list to sound principled. They are limits we have learned, since 2005, that crossing breaks something that cannot be repaired.

Why Tigris Gate?

Five thousand years ago, on this same land, a different problem of trust took shape. Strangers needed to identify themselves at a distance — to certify that this jar of grain came from this household, that this contract bore the mark of this merchant, that this boundary stone was raised by this king. So the people here invented the cylinder seal: a small carved stone that, rolled across wet clay, left a unique impression. No two seals were the same. Each told the reader, in image: this is who is speaking.

Five millennia later, the question has not changed shape much.

Who is on the other side of the door, and what do they actually need?

Read about our heritage →

Ready to Talk?

Whether you're thinking about Iraq for the first time, or you already have operations and want a better advisor — we'd be glad to meet you.

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In full confidence. No obligation. We respond within one business day.