Partner

Ann is a Partner at Fenech & Fenech Advocates. She heads the Marine Litigation Department and her main area of practice is all aspects of marine litigation.

Ann qualified in 1986 and immediately joined Holman Fenwick and Willan in London. In 1991 she moved from there to Chaffe, McCall, Phillips Toler and Sarpy in New Orleans, and in 1992 joined Fenech & Fenech Advocates setting up the Marine Litigation Department. She was appointed Managing Partner of the firm in June 2008, a position she held until December 2020.

She has extensive experience in disputes ranging from ship building contracts to immediate casualty response acting for the most important international maritime operators and has dealt exclusively with maritime issues for the past 38 years. She has been involved in the majority of serious casualties involving Maltese registered vessels worldwide and those occurring in Maltese territorial waters. She has extensive experience in judicial sales having conducted several judicial sales by auctions and court approved private sales. She has a wealth of experience in marine related transactional work including having acted for the Malta Privatisation Unit on the privatisation processes related to the then Malta Drydocks. Ann is also the legal correspondent for the West of England, the American Club and Steamship Mutual.

Ann was elected President of the CMI in Antwerp in 2022 after having occupied the post of Vice President since 2018. She is co-Chair of the CMI international working group on the Ratification of the Convention on the International Effects of Judicial Sales of Ships and was the CMI Co-Ordinator of the project at UNCITRAL leading to the approval by the Commission of the Draft Convention on the International Effects of Judicial Sales of Ships in June 2022 and its adoption by the General Assembly in December 2022. She was heavily involved in the organisation of the 2nd signing ceremony of the Convention on the International Effects of Judicial Sales held in Malta in June 2024.

Ann has been involved in drafting a number of shipping laws including amendments to the Merchant Shipping Act, The Pilotage Regulations and the articles on actions in rem in the Code of Organisation and Civil Procedure. She lectures extensively worldwide on maritime law and particularly at the University of Malta and the International Maritime Law Institute.

She is the immediate Past President of the Malta Maritime Law Association, founding member of the Malta Maritime Forum and a board member of the European Maritime Law Organisation since 2008.

She has been appointed Honorary Member of the Croatian Maritime Law Association and the Italian Maritime Law Association.

Ann has been listed in the Lloyds List Top 100 People – The Shipping Industry’s most influential people in 2022 and 2023.

In 2024 she was awarded with the Newsmaker of the Year Award, during an award giving ceremony at the Malta Maritime Summit 2024.

Languages: Maltese, English, Italian, French