Zakaria Bouabidi

Zakaria Bouabidi is a lawyer at the Paris Bar and holds the Certificate of Aptitude for the Legal Profession (CAPA), awarded by the École des Avocats Sud-Ouest Pyrénées. He holds a PhD in Private Law under a joint supervision arrangement between the University of South Toulon-Var and Abdelmalek Essaâdi University. He defended a doctoral thesis entitled “Debt Recovery Litigation: A Comparative Approach between France and Morocco”, which received the jury’s unanimous highest honours and was subsequently published by Presses Universitaires d’Aix-Marseille.

His practice is primarily focused on business law, civil and commercial litigation, corporate law, insolvency and restructuring proceedings, banking and financial law, as well as contract drafting and structuring. He advises companies, financial institutions and economic operators on transaction structuring, contractual risk management and complex dispute resolution, particularly in cross-border matters involving Europe and North Africa.

He regularly works on matters involving distressed companies, restructuring mechanisms, guarantees, regulatory compliance and debt recovery litigation. His experience also includes advising on financing, acquisition and corporate reorganisation transactions for groups and institutions operating across a range of economic sectors.

Alongside his legal practice, he holds academic positions as a permanent professor at the Faculty of Legal, Economic and Social Sciences of Casablanca, where he teaches commercial law, contractual techniques, as well as compliance and financial communication within specialised master’s programmes. He has also taught at the University of Toulon and the International University of Casablanca, contributing to training programmes in business law and banking and financial law.

He is the author of numerous publications in France and Morocco covering insolvency proceedings, over-indebtedness law, securities law and contemporary developments in business law, published in specialist journals focusing on banking law and distressed companies law.

He is fluent in Arabic, French, Spanish and English, enabling him to operate effectively in multilingual and international legal environments.

In 2025, he was awarded the “North Africa Partner of the Year” prize at the African Legal Awards.