Mishcon de Reya LLP

Founded by Lord Mishcon in 1937, in a one-room office in Brixton, Mishcon de Reya now employs over 1400 people and 650 lawyers in total, across offices in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Singapore, and in Hong Kong through their association with Karas So. Mishcon de Reya services an international community of clients and provides advice in situations where the constraints of geography often do not apply. The work the firm undertakes is cross-border, multi-jurisdictional and complex. Mishcon helps their clients benefit from new economies, new geographic centres of wealth, the global movement of people and capital, and the impact of new technologies and new knowledge.

Mishcon appreciates the privilege of sitting alongside their clients as a trusted advisor. They solve their problems, enable opportunities and unlock possibilities for them. Building strong personal connections to these clients and their businesses is important to them. It is for these reasons the company says ‘It’s business. But it’s personal’.

The firm: Mishcon de Reya prides itself not only on the diverse range of legal services that it offers as a practice, but also on the diverse range of people who provide those services. The central role played by the Academy, the firm’s in-house place of learning, development and new thinking, and in its active and innovative social impact strategy are buttressed by a range of non-legal services that ensure the firm is filled with the brightest professionals working across multiple disciplines, applying cutting-edge knowledge and technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science.

Types of work undertaken: Mishcon de Reya has acted in some of the most high-profile and ground-breaking cases in the industry. Some of our recent experience includes:

Advising Vision Industries Company, a leading investor and developer of green energy industrial projects and local supply chains, in three concurrent substantial sustainable energy joint venture projects with China-based green energy companies and Renewable Energy Localization Company (RELC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which will build local manufacturing capacity and supply chains for green energy systems in wind power and solar power worth over US$3 billion.

Advising Wayve on Series C funding round, raising $1.05 billion led by SoftBank Group Corp. with participation from Microsoft and NVIDIA. This deal was reported at the time as being the largest AI fundraising by a European company and ranked as one of the top venture financings in the UK

Successfully defended Telefonica UK Limited (“O2”) against claims exceeding £1 billion for alleged anti-competitive conduct and collusion in the Phones 4u litigation, with the High Court ruling in favour of the mobile network operators.

Secured a judgment for the Weiss Technik Group, a leader in environmental simulation and air systems technology, against four former employees for breach of confidence, copyright infringement and breach of contract.

Obtained a compensation award exceeding £1.6 million – one of the highest whistleblowing awards ever made – for Vladislav Zabelin, following his claims for automatic unfair dismissal and whistleblowing detriments.

Acted for Jenny, The Accidental American (Mandatory Disclosure Regime case). Claims and complaints have been filed in several countries (UK, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg), as well as against financial institutions in connection with systems of automatic exchange of information from the EU to the US (‘FATCA’) and between non-US countries amongst themselves (’CRS’) as well as in connection with new public registers of beneficial ownership which are in the process of being introduced throughout the EU (the UK also has its own public register).

Advising a pan-African conglomerate with a significant energy business, on developing their ESG strategy, including a detailed ESG review of the business (applying Mishcon Purpose Universal Framework) and a process of stakeholder engagement across the business, resulting in a detailed profiling and gap analysis together with a business ESG strategy and implementation plan.

Acting for Sky in its dispute with Sky v SkyKick (which has been heard by both the European Court of Justice and UK Supreme Court), widely regarded as the most important trademark case since the EU trademark regime began.

Advising a UHNW family on the restructuring of their multi-national business interests to segregate their shareholdings in foreign business and real estate for tax and dynastic planning.

Advising an HNW individual relocating to the UK on his residence and domicile status, pre-arrival tax planning, his ability to claim the remittance basis and tax exposure as a shareholder of various offshore companies.

Advising a Chinese billionaire property developer on his UK tax and estate planning including how to structure the purchase and ownership of a very high value UK residential property.

Advised Yinson Production Offshore Pte. Ltd. on its successful closing of a five-year corporate facility loan of up to US$500 million, including accordion – Marine Money's Offshore East Deal of the Year 2023.