Gateley Legal

Alex Thompson

Alex has for the last decade specialised in advising clients on fraud and asset recovery matters. His experience includes co-ordinating a major international asset recovery assignment for UK and offshore liquidators, which culminated in litigation being pursued in England for approximately £70 million and ultimately led to a substantial recovery being achieved for an institutional creditor. He has successfully applied on numerous occasions for urgent without notice relief in support of fraud proceedings and has conducted “dawn raids” for office-holders in order to prevent asset dissipation and preserve evidence. Most recently, he has advised an overseas government in relation to the pursuit of complex and high value fraud claims arising from the collapse of the country’s banking sector. This has required an international asset recovery strategy to be carefully devised and litigation to be co-ordinated in multiple jurisdictions, including the relevant FSU state, the UK and the United States.

Andrew Evans

Andrew is a leading competition and European law lawyer working in merger control and anti-competitive agreements and practices, state aid and anti-dumping investigations. He has advised numerous sectors including biotechnology, automotive, pharmaceuticals, technology, manufacturing, property development, construction, waste and recycling, aerospace, defence and the public sector.

Andrew Messent

Andrew’s main area of practice is claims arising from the carriage of goods by sea, road and air and other related areas such as warehousing. As well as the full range of transportation issues, Andrew also regularly advises on related insurance matters. Andrew is the co-author of CMR: Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods by Road (4th edition, 2017).

Brendan McGeever

Brendan is a leading corporate restructuring lawyer and head of the firm's Banking Group. He advises banks, funds, venture capitalists together with other financial institutions and stakeholders in businesses, on all aspects of corporate restructuring and turnaround. As well as corporate restructuring, Brendan also advises insolvency practitioners on more complex assignments and can give advice on all aspects of corporate administration. 

Brian Taylor

Brian practises mainly in the area of dry shipping litigation, international trade and the disputes that arise out of commodity transactions. He has acted for ship owners, charterers, P&I Clubs, shipyards and all parties involved in the sale, purchase and transportation of commodities (wet and dry). He has extensive experience of most forms of arbitration and has represented clients at all levels of the English court system. He has also acted in several complex ship building arbitrations.

Christopher Fanner

Chris has a wealth of experience advising on a wide variety of leveraged acquisition, corporate, telecoms, funds, infrastructure and other structured debt financings. His client base includes banks, mezzanine funds, private equity funds and portfolio companies, and corporate borrowers. He is an expert in advising companies based within the healthcare, TMT and financial services sectors.

Emily Drake

Emily specialises in civil fraud matters and advises in relation to claims such as tax avoidance, complex property fraud and cryptocurrency fraud.  Her experience includes advising in relation to fraud claims both before the High Court and the LCIA and she has advised institutional clients before the First-Tier and Upper Tribunal (Tax). Her expertise also covers asset protection, asset tracing and recovery and she has advised clients in cross-border matter involving other jurisdictions such as the BVI, Cyprus and the CIS market. Emily also has significant experience in advising clients at the investigatory stage of matters, assisting clients to identify and prepare claims, identify and recover assets and preparing interim applications for the preservation of assets and documentation.

Guy Guinan

Guy has extensive experience of both contentious and non-contentious employment law. He acts for a broad range of national and international clients in the corporate, retail, leisure and public sectors. He advises in respect of all other forms of trade dispute and frequently appears as an advocate in the Employment Tribunals dealing with unfair dismissal, discrimination and other employment litigation. Guy takes a proactive approach to dispute resolution and his practice is focussed on being innovative and finding a commercial solution to disputes prior to litigation becoming necessary. Guy’s forte is in providing pragmatic advice to in-house counsel and HR professionals alike.

Jacob Robinson

Jacob specialises in advising on corporate, banking and debt restructuring transactions. He is regularly involved in complex structured finance, real estate finance and corporate lending transactions including leveraged buy-outs and general commercial lending. He acts for many of the major banks and financial institutions in the UK, private equity houses and corporate borrowers and regularly acts on multiple jurisdictional transactions. 

Jane Hobbs

Jane has expertise in shipping and insurance disputes. She specialises in carriage of goods by sea and road and insurance (both marine and non-marine).Experience includes: Shipping & TransportJane acts for cargo owners, cargo insurers, freight forwarders, haulage companies, shipowners and charterers.Many of her cases involve pursuing or defending cargo claims, advising on contracts and acting on a wide range of shipping disputes. Marine InsuranceJane acts for insureds and insurers on all types of marine and freight liability policies. She handles policy disputes as well as insurance recoveries and defence work. Non Marine InsuranceJane acts for businesses and individuals who have problems getting a claim paid under an insurance policy. She has good experience of dealing with claims under almost every type of non-marine insurance policy, including property, engineering, Directors & Officers, credit risk, crime and fidelity, construction, public liability and professional indemnity policies. Where clients do not have insurance cover for a particular loss or liability, Jane helps them to make recoveries from parties responsible for the loss. She also helps them to defend their position, when others are holding them liable for a loss.

Jenny Vaughan

Patent Attorney, Partner

Jim Hillan

Jim’s practice covers the provision of tax advice to clients undertaking domestic and international corporate transactions.  He also specialises in the VAT and stamp taxes issues arising from real estate development and investment transactions.

Jocelyn Virtue

Jocelyn specialises in real estate finance for both investment and development facilities, including hotels financing. She also has experience of corporate lending and investment grade lending. She has represented a range of UK, European and US banks, building societies and funds in UK and cross-border finance transactions. She also has significant experience acting for real estate finance borrowers. Jocelyn has experience in acting for a variety of surety and insurance firms, both individually and in syndicates/ groups. This includes advising on indemnities, facility letters/ agreements and risk-sharing arrangements and in particular on the interaction of sureties’ rights with secured senior debt which may be in place and the documentation covering that.

John Downs

John has expertise in a wide range of commercial property work with a particular focus on the hotels and leisure sector, real estate finance, retail and investment property matters. He advises a variety of international and UK corporate clients on acquisitions and disposals of various types of commercial property, from individual properties to the acquisition or sale of portfolios of properties. He has acted for a number of institutional landlords and corporate tenants on estate management matters, including the roll-out of branded concepts. In addition, he also regularly works closely with colleagues on the property elements of corporate transactions.

Julian Hayes

Julian has over two decades of experience of litigation, principally in relation to high value professional negligence cases and providing litigation services to insolvency practitioners and commercial clients arising from corporate and complex individual insolvency. Julian has successfully pursued negligence, office holder and company claims against professionals and directors. Assignments have included acting for HMRC in relation to orchestrated missing trader fraud and pursuing claims arising from the administration of a managed serviced company scheme.

Katherine Hornsby

Katherine specialises in corporate finance and general corporate work including mergers & acquisitions, disposals, private equity, buy-outs, investments and joint ventures and has experience acting for buyers, sellers, private equity funds and management teams.

Ken Titchen

Ken has wide ranging experience of all aspects of restructuring, insolvency and turnaround work, with an emphasis on transactional and advisory work. He has advised lenders, insolvency practitioners, companies and directors, creditors and stakeholders for many years, operating across a wide variety of industries and business sectors. Ken has spent time on secondment with a national lender in the UK and with the high value restructuring team at a leading overseas bank.

Kenneth Maxwell

Kenneth acts for a wide range of debt funders in the real estate market. As well as acting on real estate investment transactions, Kenneth advises lenders and borrowers on development finance matters. He also has expertise in lending in the healthcare sector.

Laura Devlin

Laura is experienced in advising on corporate, real estate and leverage finance transactions. Her practice spans a range of sectors with particular experience in general residential, commercial and mixed use investment and development finance.

Louise O'Toole

Louise provides a mixture of traditional private client and UK tax advice for international client services, in particular to mid and high net worth individuals either living in the UK or non-UK individuals with UK interests.

Mahnvir Singh

Mahnvir is a Legal Director in the restructuring team and has experience of advising a broad spectrum of clients including banks, funds, PE houses and CLOs, corporate debtors, directors, shareholders, insolvency practitioners, financial advisers, agents/security trustees and pension scheme trustees. Mahnvir has also gained valuable experience from secondments at major international banks and has first-hand experience of corporate and investment bank restructuring teams, leveraged and structured debt financings, distressed debt trading and distressed mergers and acquisitions.  Notable matters that Mahnvir has worked on include: the CPP and Affinion Schemes of Arrangement, IBRC loan portfolio sales, Regency Casinos, Opal Property Group, KCA Deutag, Snoras Bank, Drive Assist, Premium Bars and Restaurants plc, Meridien Hotels Group, Eurotunnel, Concordia Bus AB, Courts plc and Homebuy plc.

Mark Tiggeman

Mark specialises in construction law and is also highly experienced in contentious commercial matters, particularly in handling complex cases with cross border elements. He regularly acts in cases involving both Common Law and Civil Law, including those involving international standard forms of construction contracts including, but not limited to, FIDIC.

Mark Pearce

Mark advises individuals and trustees on all aspects of UK tax and private client legislation that may be relevant to them.   Mark’s niche area of specialism is advising clients with international elements (whether these be work, family or assets), clients holding or creating  digital assets or clients seeking to structure digital asset businesses. While there are certain, common actions most clients should take, such as preparing wills and lasting powers of attorney, more complex scenarios require bespoke planning. Such planning may mean the establishment of domestic or international trusts and companies or ascertaining the UK classification and tax treatment of digital assets such as NFTs. Mark works with clients to help them understand the ownership, management and tax aspects of such structures. Mark’s work often involves considering a client’s future and how they would like to hold and eventually devolve their assets. With digital assets, even ‘simple’ activities, such as gifting a cryptocurrency, can give rise to a number of issues.  Internationally, it is often necessary to consider laws outside those of the UK, whether they be domestic laws of a particular country of religious legal systems such as Shari’a. With digital assets the lack of legislation in many jurisdictions often requires an analysis of international standards and best practice.  Mark’s experience with a number of international jurisdictions is often useful to clients when considering their own jurisdiction of residence and the jurisdiction for their businesses and assets.

Martin Montgomery

Martin advises on a broad range of corporate transactions, including buy-side and sell-side mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital transactions, investments, joint ventures and shareholder structures, pre-IPO fundraisings, IPOs and secondary securities issues. He acts for public and private corporates, institutions and individual entrepreneurs and management teams.

Nicholas Walser

Nick specialises in litigation and arbitration relating to shipping and international trade. He speaks fluent French and is a correspondent member of the French Maritime Law Association (AFDM). Nick’s experience and expertise includes commodity trading disputes, especially under GAFTA and FOSFA terms and oil trading contracts, cargo claims, disputes under charterparties, bills of lading, general average, MOAs and shipbuilding contracts. Lloyd’s List named him as one of their top 10 UK maritime lawyers in 2017.

Nick Smith

Nick has significant experience in national and international corporate finance, capital markets, private equity and mergers & acquisitions, with particular specialisms including real estate investment and finance, and telecoms and technology mergers & acquisitions.

Nuala Murphy

  Nuala is a specialist employment solicitor advising on all matters relating to the employment relationship.  Nuala’s practice includes both contentious and non-contentious work.  She advises clients on a range of internal HR related issues and carries out training for managers and HR advisors.  Nuala undertakes litigation in the Employment Tribunal, including multi party claims.  She is also involved in Court litigation as a result of breaches of confidentiality or post-termination restrictions. Nuala has represented a number of senior executives and advises on exit packages. Nuala regularly advises on the employment issues arising out of corporate transactions, such as mergers and acquisitions and TUPE transfers.

Oliver Harker

Oliver advises on a broad range of corporate and capital markets matters, including private M&A, Takeover Code-governed transactions, IPOs, private equity, venture capital and joint ventures. He acts for private and public listed companies, financial institutions, private equity, management teams, entrepreneurs and state owned entities and has a wealth of experience of advising on complex cross-border transactions.

Oliver O'Sullivan

Oliver specialises in providing immigration advice to companies and to individuals. He supports companies with managing the legal immigration requirements of global assignments, particularly for companies looking to hire workers into a UK office. He is a specialist in advising overseas companies and entrepreneurs with regards setting up UK offices and companies in line with UK immigration law.

Paul Hayward

Paul provides expert advice for institutions and management teams on leveraged transactions. He also heads up the firm’s London office. He specialises in investment work and in advising on all forms of merger & acquisition work. He advises numerous private equity funds on a wide range of corporate matters.

Rafe Courage

Rafe specialises in residential development, acting for developers, housebuilders, social housing providers and landowners on the sale and purchase of development sites. The type of work that Rafe undertakes includes conditional development/sale agreements involving planning obligations, site assembly and investigations and infrastructure logistics. Rafe is experienced in negotiating sales, planning and/or revenue overage agreements, commercial lettings and complex infrastructure/energy (CHP) arrangements.

Ravi Francis

The majority of Ravi’s practice is for international clients. His clients are normally professional fiduciaries, wealthy individuals and their advisers. Ravi advises on a broad range of subjects which tend to centre around UK tax law and the law governing trusts and other wealth-holding structures. His most common areas of advice include Supporting individuals, businesses and fiduciaries on the UK taxation and structuring of crypto assets as well as succession and estate planning considerations surrounding digital assets. tax planning for clients who are moving to or leaving the UK, to minimise both UK and foreign taxes; determining an individual’s UK tax residence and domicile status under UK law and the impact this has for UK tax purposes; using offshore trusts, foundations and companies to hold personal wealth and business assets; establishment, administration and taxation of UK investment companies; advising on UK succession laws and how conflicts with foreign succession laws can be resolved; and the application of double taxation agreements to an individual’s affairs.

Rebecca Hume

Rebecca has over 30 years’ experience of complex commercial disputes which typically involve cross border creditor-debtor disputes, international fraud, asset tracing and recovery and international judgment and award enforcement.  She has significant expertise in the use of contentious insolvency and  receivership to unlock value for insolvent estates and monetize claims.  Her assignments often involves complex hedge funds and private equity structures. Her clients include insolvency practitioners, fund managers and administrators and financial institutions located in onshore and offshore regions. Rebecca spent over 12 years practising in the Cayman Islands and was also admitted to practise in the BVI for 6 years. As well as being involved in complex assignments involving the Cayman Islands and the BVI, Rebecca has also pursued cases in many jurisdictions including the U.S., The Bahamas, Bermuda, Hong Kong, and the PRC. Rebecca is on the Advisory board of the ThoughtLeaders4 FIRE International conference on fraud and asset recovery and on the steering committee of Cambridge Forum’s International Enforcement of Judgments and Awards Forum

Richard Healey

Richard has expertise in restructuring matters and complex and international dispute resolution. He has significant extra-territorial experience in asset protection, asset tracing and recovery and of representing parties in disputes, both in the High Court and London Court of International Arbitration, as well as numerous overseas courts including the Courts of Appeal of Hong Kong, Singapore and Gibraltar. Richard has a particular specialism in cases involving tax avoidance, evasion and fraud. He started his career as a Banking and Financial Services Litigator at the international firm of Simmons and Simmons and now has 20 years of complex litigation experience. Since 1999, he’s had extensive experience of conducting heavyweight financial litigation matters on behalf of high net worth individuals, corporate, institutional and officeholder clients as well as government departments.

Richard Jordan

Richard provides tax and legal advice to high net worth individuals, their families, trustees and family offices. He provides full estate and succession planning advice for clients that are tax resident in the UK, often with tax as a major factor, and frequently in connection with liquidation events. He explains, in simple terms, the wide range of planning options available to such clients, from family investment companies to trusts. Further afield, Richard provides expert tax advice to individuals looking to immigrate to the UK, or seeking to invest some of their personal wealth into the UK. He has expertise in the legal and tax implications of a wide variety of offshore structures used to hold luxury assets and liquid investments.

Robert Rosenberg

Robert specialises in consumer credit, mortgages and financial services regulation and advises extensively in respect of lending documentation, financial promotions and compliance with the FCA Handbook of rules and guidance. He has a niche expertise advising the sub-prime and not standard lending sectors on regulatory and legal risk including dealing with the regulators. He carries out compliance reviews for clients and provides support in dealing with FCA authorization issues, regulatory reviews and investigations including support on past business reviews. He has worked for the government and regulator advising on consumer credit policy. He is known for providing pragmatic commercial solutions in complex matters.

Sarah Fitzgibbons

Sarah specialises in commercial dispute resolution, with particular emphasis on shareholder disputes. She has acted for Plcs, privately-owned companies and individuals in a variety of matters including advising on shareholder disputes, commercial contract disputes, restrictive covenant claims, injunctions and search orders, partnership disputes, professional negligence claims and breach of warranty claims.

Vijay Patel

Vijay specialises in advising on commercial real estate matters, with particular emphasis on finance and development.  He has advised investors, developers and funders on all aspects of real estate transactions, including acquisitions and disposals, development agreements, commercial leases, property management and financing arrangements (for both investment and development). 

Zum Mohammed

Zum advises on all aspects of corporate law, including venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions, joint ventures, shareholders' agreements, investments and general corporate advisory mandates. She acts regularly for investors, entrepreneurs and management teams in a wide range of sectors.