Our deals

We won litigation team of the year at the 2012 Lawyer Awards for our representation of the Tchenguiz Family Trust in its groundbreaking claims against failed Icelandic bank, Kaupthing Bank Hf, for sums in excess of £1 billion. Together with a related claim, the sums at stake represented approximately a third of Iceland's GDP and, until the claims were resolved, Kaupthing's assets could not be distributed to creditors (with combined claims of approximately Euro 40 billion). Kaupthing settled the claims in September 2011 following major jurisdiction battles in the English and Icelandic Courts involving a series of novel points of European insolvency law which have not been determined previously by either court.

In a UK first for a commercial case the High Court granted us permission to serve a claim through the networking site after the claimant was unable to locate him at his known address.

Our defence of Dmitry Skarga and Tagir Izmailov successfully exonerated them of claims worth US$1 billion brought against them for alleged bribe-taking by their former employers. The work our team did was praised by the judges of The Lawyer Awards 2011 for being ‘tactically and legally excellent’.

We advised Indonesian airline Lion Air on the biggest ever airline order for 230 Boeing 737 aircraft valued at US $21.7 billion.  The signing of the deal was so significant that US President Barak Obama attended it.

We lifted a $12 billion international freezing order obtained by a company in the Exxon Mobil Group against its client, PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company. We successfully argued that the English Court did not have jurisdiction: PDVSA does not have any connection with the UK - no business, no assets, indeed no presence at all. What’s more, PDVSA had not behaved in any way which gave grounds for the injunction.

Our advice encompassed the collision, salvage and total loss.

Right from the outset, we advised our client, Project Rigs, on every aspect of this hugely complex transaction. It embraced diverse structuring, finance, corporate tax, construction and commercial elements plus construction and outfitting contracts that ranged from the UK to Russia.

When Chinese billionaire Nina Wang died, her close confidant, feng-shui advisor and lover Tony Chan contested a will that left her whole estate to charity. The Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal have ruled against Chan but he has appealed to Hong Kong’s highest Court. We will continue to advise the will’s administrators on managing and preserving the assets of the contested estate until litigation is complete.

This was the 318,000-dwt "Hua San", the world's first Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) built to Common Structural Rules and delivered to Ocean Tankers of Singapore ahead of schedule.

This £90 million, eight-year transaction involved Principle Insurance outsourcing its insurance and back-office operations to Capita, the UK's leading outsourcing company. Principle Insurance was the first Islamic Insurance company to receive authorisation to trade from the FSA. The deal was not only large and complex, it also meant we had to develop an extensive knowledge of how Shari’a law could operate successfully within the UK’s regulatory structure. This was a true area of innovation. We won outsourcing advisor of the year from the National Outsourcing Association for this.