Howard Rosen | Chairman
Rail Working Group

HOWARD ROSEN C.B.E, M.A. (Oxon) Howard Rosen was born in 1955 and grew up in London. He studied law at Exeter College, Oxford University, and was awarded his degree in Jurisprudence in 1978. He qualified as an English solicitor in 1980. Post qualification, he initially worked in private practice in a London solicitors’ firm. From 1981 to 1988, he was in-house counsel for international leasing companies specialising in the legal and tax aspects of international finance. In 1983, he was moved to Zurich by his then employer At the beginning of 1989, Howard returned to private practice as an English Solicitor and established Howard Rosen Solicitors, an English law firm, in Zug, Switzerland. He specialises in international commercial and finance law, international leasing law and trusts. Aside from being the principal of Howard Rosen Solicitors, he is also founder and Managing Director of Rosetrust AG, Zug, a commercial trust company, and Aviation & Transport Services GmbH, both also based in Zug. Since 1996, Howard Rosen has been the chairman of the Rail Working Group, a global NGO constituted by UNIDROIT, the International Institute for Unification of Private Law, which is focused on the adoption around the world of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment. He has been actively involved in the development, drafting, and ratification of the Cape Town Convention itself and the Aviation and (Luxembourg) Rail Protocols thereto. He has participated in various diplomatic conferences and taken a leading role in drafting and negotiating contracts, regulations for the international registry, and the UN Model Rules on permanent identification of railway rolling stock, all relating to the operation of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol. He works closely with governments, parliamentarians, academics, and international organisations including UNIDROIT, OTIF, the OECD, the European Union Commission, the African Union, and the United Nations Economic Commissions in Europe and Africa, as well as with financiers, operators, manufacturers, and professional advisers in the rail industry. Howard Rosen is a contributor to numerous journals and books on asset finance, railways, and trusts, and is a regular speaker and moderator at rail workshops, seminars and conferences around the world. Howard is a member of the Law Society of England and Wales, the International Bar Association, and the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. He is also enrolled as a Solicitor in the Republic of Ireland. He is a correspondent of UNIDROIT, a member of the Institute of Directors, London, and a former president and now honorary councillor of the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce. He was president of the Council of British Chambers of Commerce in Europe (COBCOE) from 2005 to 2012 and continued to run its Public Affairs Commission until 2016. In the 2003 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Howard was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to British business in Switzerland. He has British and Swiss nationality, is married with two sons, lives in Zurich, and in his spare time, sings in a local choir, skis, and is a keen aquarist.