Samer Awadh

Samer Awadh is a corporate and commercial lawyer who advises businesses, owners, executives, boards, investors and financial institutions across Western Canada and internationally.

Clients turn to Samer when they are acquiring or selling a business, raising capital or financing growth, planning succession, navigating governance or shareholder issues, or weighing a significant opportunity or risk. They often involve him before a course of action has been decided.

Samer works with clients to understand what they are trying to accomplish, identify the legal and commercial considerations that matter, and provide clear legal recommendations—including the advantages, disadvantages and risks of different approaches—so business leaders can make informed decisions with confidence.

His practice spans mergers and acquisitions, financing and securities, governance and complex corporate and commercial matters. For some clients, Samer acts as external general counsel, serving as a principal point of contact for legal matters and coordinating lawyers and other advisers across different specialties.

Understanding the Decision

Samer’s approach starts with understanding the business problem before deciding what legal work is required.

He works directly with owners, executives, senior management and boards, often over many years and across multiple matters. Those relationships allow him to understand not only the immediate legal issue, but also the client’s objectives, history, people, decision-making processes and approach to risk. That context helps him focus his advice on the issues that could affect the decision rather than treating every legal issue as equally important.

Business leaders rarely face purely legal problems. Significant decisions can involve strategy, capital, governance, risk, people and execution at the same time. Samer often serves as a sounding board as clients work through those decisions. His role is to provide clear legal recommendations, explain the advantages, disadvantages and risks associated with different courses of action, and give business leaders the information and perspective they need to make decisions with confidence based on their own objectives and assessment of risk.

External General Counsel

For some clients, that relationship takes the form of external general counsel. Samer serves as a principal outside legal adviser and a point of continuity across different legal matters. He does not approach that role by trying to be every kind of lawyer to the client. When a matter requires knowledge outside his own practice, he identifies and brings together the appropriate lawyers or other advisers, helps them understand the broader context and remains engaged in integrating their advice into the client’s overall objectives. This gives clients access to focused experience while maintaining continuity and accountability across the relationship.

Transactions, Financing and Business Growth

Samer’s own practice provides a broad foundation for that role. He regularly advises on mergers and acquisitions, financing and securities, corporate governance and general corporate and commercial matters. His experience includes domestic and cross-border transactions, significant debt and equity financings, public company securities matters, shareholder and governance issues, succession matters, and major projects involving multiple parties, advisers and financing arrangements.

His clients range from founder-led and family-owned businesses to public companies, investors, financial institutions and boards. Samer has worked across a range of industries, including agribusiness, manufacturing, mining, clean energy and technology, with significant experience in regulated and capital-intensive businesses where legal, operational, financing, regulatory and stakeholder considerations often intersect. He previously co-led Agribusiness and Food group and continues to advise businesses across the agribusiness value chain.

Boardroom Perspective

Samer’s approach to advising boards and executives is also informed by substantial experience serving as a director. He holds the ICD.D designation and has served with organizations involved in business, economic development, pension and benefits administration, and the community. That experience gives him a practical appreciation for how significant organizational decisions are actually made. Legal considerations are rarely the only consideration. Directors and executives must weigh strategy, risk, available information, competing interests, stakeholder considerations and their responsibilities to the organization. Samer’s experience on both sides of the boardroom table helps him provide legal advice within that broader decision-making context.

Innovation and Scalable Solutions

Samer also has a longstanding interest in problem-solving, systems and innovation. He studied computer science before attending law school and has been a member of the MLT Aikins Innovation Committee since 2019, serving as Co-Chair since 2026. His interest in innovation extends beyond technology to how people, processes and professional teams can work more effectively.

That perspective carries into his legal practice. Samer looks beyond the immediate legal question to understand how the different pieces of a problem fit together and to develop solutions that are practical to implement, efficient to operate and capable of scaling as the client’s business or organization evolves.

Growth and Transactions

• Lead counsel to a Canadian private company in connection with its $50-million merger with a U.S.-based company
• Lead counsel to a Canadian group of companies in acquisitions of agribusinesses with an aggregate value of approximately $105 million
• Counsel to a group of investors in the divestiture of Saskatchewan assets valued at approximately $110 million in a clean energy facility

Capital and Financing

• Lead Saskatchewan counsel to lenders in connection with the financing of a utility-scale solar energy facility
• Lead Saskatchewan counsel to the owner and manager of a $260-million wind energy project and to a syndicate of Canadian and international banks in the $280-million financing of one of Saskatchewan’s largest wind energy projects
• Lead counsel to an agribusiness in connection with syndicated credit facilities with an aggregate value exceeding $200 million
• Lead counsel to a group of crop input retailers in connection with the establishment and operations of their $20-million group

Boards, Governance and Capital Markets

• Lead counsel to the board of a Canadian public company in its successful response to proxy battles initiated by a group of activist shareholders
• Corporate and securities counsel to publicly traded companies on continuous disclosure, prospectus, issuer bid, reverse takeover and proxy dispute matters
• Lead corporate and securities counsel to a junior mining issuer in connection with its technical report and related continuous disclosure obligations

• Co-Chair, Innovation Committee, MLT Aikins LLP (2026–present; member since 2019)
• Vice-Chair, Economic Development Regina (2026–present; director since 2022)
• Chair of the Governance Committee, Economic Development Regina (2025–present; member since 2022)
• Director, Plannera Pension & Benefits (2024–present)
• Finance Advisory Board Member, Practical Law Canada (2023–present)
• Director, Economic Development Regina (2022–present)
• Director, Regina Symphony Foundation (2021–present)
• Director, Regina Symphony Orchestra (2021–2025)
• Honourary Member-at-Large, National Business Law Section, Canadian Bar Association (2023–present)
• Chair, National Business Law Section, Canadian Bar Association (2021–2022)
• Officer, National Business Law Section, Canadian Bar Association (2018–2023)
• Executive Member, National Business Law Section, Canadian Bar Association (2016–2018)
• Director, Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame (2017–2023)
• Executive Member, Leaders Council, Hill and Levene Schools of Business (2017–2022)
• Chair, Saskatchewan Business Law South Section, Canadian Bar Association (2015–2018)
• Director and Treasurer, Regina Soccer Association (2015–2018)
• Editor, Saskatchewan Law Review (2012–2013)

Selected writing and presentations include:

• Presenter, “Getting to the Answer Faster: Framing the Problem Before You Start,” CBA Skilled Lawyer Series (October 2026)
• Presenter and panellist at national and regional agricultural manufacturing and agribusiness industry conferences, including forums focused on innovation, export, governance and capital markets (2025)
• Author, “Canada Chapter in International Secured Transactions,” Thomson Reuters (2023)
  • The book is a treatise that examines the UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) Draft Guide on Secured Transactions, which is designed to promote increased access to low-cost credit by encouraging the introduction of effective and efficient domestic-secured transactions laws around the world. The book offers analysis of secured transactions law in over 30 commercial jurisdictions and leading practitioners from major law firms in North and South America, Europe, and Asia provide insightful, practical commentary on their respective countries security interests, comparing them with the provisions of UNCITRAL legislative guidelines and providing status review of implementation in their respective countries
• Co-author, “Canada Chapter in The Food, Beverage and Cosmetics Law Review,” The Law Reviews (2023)
  • The chapter provides an overview of the various legal and regulatory frameworks impacting the food and agribusiness sector. With a focus on recent developments, it examines areas such as unique issues related to financing and mergers and acquisitions, supply chain issues (including sustainability, anti-corruption, and labour and immigration), sales and marketing, general product liability, and the role of trade organizations,
• Presenter, “Board Governance Matters, including Board Duties, Liabilities, and Conflict of Interest Matters,” Numerous boards, including boards of publicly-traded companies, credit unions, self-governing bodies, business corporations, and not-for-profit corporations (2018–present)
• Co-author, “Delivery Delays, Foreign Laws and Payment Risks in International Sales Contracts,” 8:3 Global Ventures (September 2016)
• Co-presenter, “Typical Provisions in Real Estate Opinions,” Continuing Professional Development Seminar, Law Society of Saskatchewan (March 2016)

• Recognized in the 2027 edition (and since 2025) of Chambers Canada (Corporate/Commercial, Saskatchewan, Up and Coming)
• Recognized in the 2027 edition (and since 2026) of the Best Lawyers in Canada (Mergers and Acquisitions Law, Securities Law)
• Recognized in the Lexpert Special Edition: Finance 2026
• Recognized in the Lexpert Special Edition: Mergers & Acquisitions 2026
• Recognized in the 2026 edition (and since 2025) of the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory (Corporate Finance & Securities)
• Recognized in the 2026 edition of the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory (Mergers & Acquisitions)
• BLG Research Fellow, University of Saskatchewan College of Law (2012)
• Orest and Marie Bendas Prize in Jurisprudence (2012)