Oliver Auld
Oliver Auld
Partner | Charles Russell Speechlys
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Dispute Resolution or Arbitration
Estates: Contentious
Trusts: Contentious
Office Location
United Kingdom
Short Biography
Oliver specialises in acting for clients involved in complex and multi-jurisdictional disputes concerning inherited wealth and assets held in English and offshore family trusts. His clients are predominantly high net-worth individuals, executors, trustees and other fiduciaries involved in the administration of family assets.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
What was your first job?
Sales assistant
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
His Dark Materials
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
A greater focus on mental capacity issues arising in relation to trusts.
Oliver Schneider-Sikorsky
Oliver Schneider-Sikorsky
Partner | BCL Solicitors
JURISDICTION
England and Wales
TOP SPECIALISMS
Reputation and Crisis Management
Criminal Litigation
Office Location
London, United Kingdom
Short Biography
Oliver is a partner in BCL Solicitors LLP’s High Net Worth (HNW) representation team. He specialises in high-stake criminal and advisory engagements for HNWs, their family offices, and their family members to protect their liberty, livelihoods, assets, and reputations from domestic and international challenge whether instigated by governments, investigating authorities, hostile corporates, or private individuals. Oliver’s private clients are public figures, politically exposed persons, and HNWs in the business, finance, and entertainment sectors. He regularly coordinates complex cross-border engagements for individuals and international family offices with sophisticated financial arrangements or business affairs. He has particular expertise advising on sensitive issues that require an appreciation of both commercial and criminal issues. Oliver has unique experience advising clients in relation to issues arising from cancel culture.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
For private clients you need to be able to rely on impeccable service and ideally there would be a fantastic schnitzel on the menu for me, so it has to be Charlie's at Brown's Hotel.
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
Choose your own path
What was your first job?
Working in a video (for people who remember what that is) rental shop at 15, happily with a Domino's pizza expense account.
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
The Fountainhead
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Increasing scrutiny of the private lives and affairs of HNWs and pubic figures by the police and other regulators
Patricia Boon
Patricia Boon
Partner | Forsters
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Art and Cultural Property
Trusts: Planning
Tax Advisory
Office Location
United Kingdom
Short Biography
My work involves advising high net worth individuals and families, trustees, and family offices within and outside the UK. I provide pre-immigration UK tax advice and work with a range of UK and non-UK based clients, advising on personal tax, trust and cross-border succession and estate planning matters, and avoidance of family disputes. This work involves advising on inter-generational transmission of wealth, cross-border estate planning, remittance issues, the UK tax treatment of UK resident and foreign trusts (for trustees, settlors, and beneficiaries), as well as on the structuring of, and UK tax implications of acquiring and holding, UK property. I travel very regularly to Asia, where I work with clients to advise on family business succession planning and family governance issues.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
Murano
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
Before I started to work, a friend advised always to have a holiday planned in the diary
What was your first job?
Teaching Assistant
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
Fifth Sun
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Possibly significant UK tax changes to the rules on domicile and the remittance basis.
Patrick Harney
Patrick Harney
Partner | Mishcon de Reya
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Estates: Planning
Trusts: Planning
Tax Advisory
Office Location
London, United Kingdom
Short Biography
Patrick is a market leading international private client lawyer who has worked in Dublin, London, and New York, specialising in cross border tax advice with a focus on US-UK and UK-Irish tax, trust and estate planning and UK resident non-domiciled tax planning. His range of clients include high profile individuals, family offices and hedge funds spanning the UK and Ireland, the US, and Latin America. He has a particular expertise in the use of family partnerships and family investment companies as a tax efficient wealth holding vehicle. Patrick has been consistently ranked by the private wealth industry and professional directories as a leading expert in tax law. He is a Chartered Tax Adviser, International Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, an Academician of The International Academy of Estate and Trust Lawyers, and lectures at the STEP/Irish Law Society Diploma Course on Trust and Estate Planning.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
Margot in Covent Garden, London
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
You need to be able to sleep at night
What was your first job?
Selling pictures door to door
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
Angela's Ashes
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Increasing focus on second citizenships
Paul Hewitt
Paul Hewitt
Partner | Withersworldwide
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Dispute Resolution or Arbitration
Estates: Contentious
Trusts: Contentious
Office Location
London, United Kingdom
Short Biography
Top ranked in the directories, described as a ‘star litigator’ and ‘a formidable opponent’; Paul's clients have included HEH VIII Nizam of Hyderabad in litigation with India and Pakistan over funds held in trust by NatWest since 1948. Paul specialises in all types of trust and succession disputes often with a cross border element, including claims about the validity, construction and rectification of wills and trusts, financial provision claims, removal of executors and trustees, and contentious estate and trust administrations. Paul also advises on contentious Court of Protection matters, both financial, and health and welfare, involving those unable to manage their own affairs. He heads the firm’s work for charities and not-for-profit organisations on legacy income.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
What was your first job?
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Natalie Sherborn
Natalie Sherborn
Partner | Withersworldwide
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Civil Fraud
Reputation and Crisis Management
Office Location
United Kingdom
Short Biography
Natalie advises high-net-worth individuals, senior executives and organisations on cross-border investigations and enforcement in respect of allegations of all aspects of financial crime including fraud, money laundering, bribery, tax evasion and sanctions violations. She has a wealth of experience formulating offensive and defensive global litigation strategies for international clients. Increasingly she is called upon to investigate and advise in respect of allegations of serious non-financial misconduct that impact on individuals and organisational culture.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
What was your first job?
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Increased corporate accountability in respect of all aspects of financial and non-financial misconduct with a renewed focus on also seeking to hold senior executives to account.
Natasha Oakshett
Natasha Oakshett
Partner | Withersworldwide
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Family Office
Trusts: Planning
Tax Advisory
Office Location
United Kingdom
Short Biography
I work with UK based and international individuals with a particular focus on taxation of PE and hedge fund manager remuneration, taxation of entrepreneurs, employees and director remuneration and incentives, plus managing risks for non-UK entities where a UK individual creates a UK nexus for such entity. I also advise more widely, on all areas of wealth planning, often from the start point of an individual coming to (or leaving) the UK in the context of the UK statutory residence rules and the remittance basis of taxation. A significant area of my practice is advising individuals and families (and their family offices) for whom a key concern is succession of their wealth / family businesses down the generations with a view to stewardship, whilst also ensuring asset protection, privacy and tax efficiency.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
What was your first job?
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Natasha Stourton
Natasha Stourton
Partner | Withersworldwide
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Estates: Contentious
Guardianship and Mental Capacity
Trusts: Contentious
Office Location
United Kingdom
Short Biography
Natasha specialises in resolving trust and succession disputes both onshore and offshore, including trustee/beneficiary disputes, contested probate and 1975 Act claims, and professional negligence in the context of estate planning and trust administration. She also advises on Court of Protection matters, including statutory wills, lifetime gifts, contested registrations and Powers of Attorney.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
What was your first job?
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Nicholas Bennett
Nicholas Bennett
Barrister | 29 Bedford Row
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Dispute Resolution or Arbitration
Estates: Planning
Family and Matrimonial
Office Location
United Kingdom
Short Biography
Nick specialises in advising on complex divorce disputes, particularly involving companies, trusts and issues of foreign law; and on drafting the pre- and post-nuptial agreements which can avoid those disputes. Chambers & Partners describe him as “very practical … a fantastic forensic mind … one of the best you can find in the UK for cross-border pre-nuptial agreements”. For obvious reasons, the identity of his clients is strictly confidential; but he acts for business leaders, celebrities, aristocratic and landed families and other wealthy individuals. He is also instructed on behalf of businesses and trustees wanting to put in place common guidelines for nuptial agreements for their staff or beneficiaries. He is one of the few English practitioners completely comfortable with work involving input from multiple jurisdictions. This means that he is frequently asked to lead a team of lawyers in different countries and navigate the complex issues which result.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
What was your first job?
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Nicholas Harries
Nicholas Harries
Partner | Macfarlanes
JURISDICTION
TOP SPECIALISMS
Charitable Planning and Philanthropy
Trusts & Trusteeship
Tax Advisory
Office Location
London, United Kingdom
Short Biography
Nicholas started his career as a barrister, practising from 10 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn (a set of chambers with a particularly strong trust advisory and drafting practice). After two years honing his tax technical knowledge at PwC he joined Macfarlanes in 2003 and has been a partner since 2007. His practice draws on both the detailed trust law and drafting experience gained at the bar and the technical tax experience gained later in his career. It embraces the full range of tax, estate and succession planning advice for individuals resident in the UK (UK and non-UK domiciliaries). It also includes advice for internationally-based individuals and their families, often where there is no significant connection with the UK. Nicholas also has significant experience in charity and philanthropy matters and is head of Macfarlanes' charity team.
What is your favorite restaurant to take a client or colleague to?
No 1 Lombard Street
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
To keep a broad practice
What was your first job?
As a church musician
What is the book you recommend to everyone?
"Any Human Heart" by William Boyd
What changes do you expect to see in your practice over the next year?
Changes to the UK tax regime following a change in government