Howard Rosen

The Rail Working Group is a not-for-profit association constituted under Swiss law representing a broad cross-section of the global railway community. For a complete list of our members and more about us, please visit our website at www.railworkinggroup.org

Howard Rosen C.B.E, M.A. (Oxon)

Howard Rosen was born in 1955 and grew up in London. He studied law at Oxford University and qualified as an English solicitor in 1980. Post-qualification, he worked until 1988 as an in-house counsel for international leasing companies. At the beginning of 1989, Mr. Rosen established a boutique English law firm, Howard Rosen Solicitors, in Zug, Switzerland, specialising in international commercial, finance, and leasing law. He is also the founder and Managing Director of Rosetrust AG, Zug, a specialist trust company which sets up and runs companies, foundations, and associations.

Since 1996, Mr. Rosen has been the Chairman of the Rail Working Group constituted by UNIDROIT, the International Institute for Unification of Private Law, and focused on the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and the adoption of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol thereto. He has been actively involved in the development and drafting of the Cape Town Convention itself and the Aviation and Rail Protocols thereto and has attended and participated in various diplomatic conferences. He works closely with governments and various international organisations, including UNIDROIT, OTIF, the European Union, the African Union, and the United Nations economic agencies in Europe and Africa, as well as with financiers, operators, manufacturers, and professional advisers working in the rail industry.

Howard Rosen is a contributor to various journals and books on asset finance, railways, and trusts and is a regular speaker at, and chairman of, seminars and conferences around the world. Mr. Rosen is a member of the Law Society of England and Wales, the International Bar Association, and the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners and 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) between 2005 and 2012 and is also a Trustee of the Commonwealth Jewish Council. He is the founder and President of Swiss Friends of Oxford University, and in 2018, Howard was honoured as a Distinguished Friend of Oxford University. Since 2023, he has been a member of the Board of the International Panel on the Information Environment.

In the 2003 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Howard was appointed 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.