HFW

Partner & Head of Complex Environments

Richard handles major incidents and disputes for marine, liability, war, kidnap & ransom, art/specie, cyber and special risks underwriters and their assureds. He has particular expertise in managing and resolving incidents in complex and hostile environments. He has played a central role in coordinating and resolving over 150 hijacking, kidnapping, extortion and detention cases worldwide over the last 15 years, dealing with the initial incident through to managing the recovery and post-recovery phases. He is generally recognised as the leading lawyer globally in this field. Richard He also regularly deals with unlawful detentions, drug seizures, fraud and similar complex problems that companies which operate globally can become exposed to. A lot of his work involves mitigating the potential liabilities arising from major incidents.

Richard has addressed various governments, law enforcement agencies and non-governmental organisations on industry’s response to incidents in complex environments, and has developed a network of contacts in government, the military, private military, financial institutions and intelligence agencies. Similarly, Richard lectures regularly in the UK and internationally on crisis response, shipping, and insurance topics, and has contributed articles to various publications. In addition to this, Richard has received substantial praise from the market. Clients value his vast wealth of knowledge and his ability to adapt to the ever-changing challenges and his proactivity in anticipating potential problems and solutions. Richard is a former winner of the prestigious Lloyd’s List Global Maritime Lawyer of the Year Award. Additionally, Richard and his team are also former winners of Lloyd’s List Corporate Social Responsibility Award which was awarded in recognition of the outstanding pro bono work the team undertook to secure the release of 48 “forgotten” hostages in Somalia. In 2021, Richard was identified and depicted in the book Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Mission to Rescue the Hostages the World Forgot (ISBN 978-178578-702-7) which tells the harrowing story of the hostages’ ordeal. Finally, Richard is a founder member of the Hostage Support Partnership (HSP), which was “commended” by the United Nations Security Council on 7 November 2017 in Security Council Resolution 2383 (2017) for its work securing the release of the 26 hostages who were held for four and a half years in Somalia. In 2019 and 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General again “commended” and “recognised” the HSP’s other work.