Clifford Chance
Market-leading global practice, with energy, focus and discretion, advising on claims both onshore and offshore
Among our peer firms, we have unparalleled experience and expertise handling high profile and heavyweight claims relating to family trusts, inheritance battles and shareholders' disputes involving family owned companies.
We have market leading practitioners who understand the different dynamics involved in private wealth disputes - even if the financial amounts at stake are not large, when a case matters to our clients, it receives our close and caring attention. We know how to handle the most delicate and confidential issues, with energy, focus and discretion.
We have our own “onshore” global network of offices. This ensures that even if a client has a dispute in a jurisdiction many miles from home, their first port of call is a legal team in their home jurisdiction and time zone.
We have close but independent ties with other firms in the offshore jurisdictions. And this means that we know how to get the very best from people in a collaborative manner.
For a selection of our global private wealth disputes experience covering such matters as inheritance, breach of trust, undue influence, fraud and family shareholder disputes, please view the examples in the drop down menu below.
Client experience
- Ownership of Trust Assets – Advised the Monsen family on a long running trusts dispute which spanned 15 years and involved proceedings in England, Cayman and Norway. The issues included a dispute as to the underlying ownership of monies in a trust and various breach of trust allegations.
- Undue Influence – Advised Heini Thyssen when his father sued him and Bermuda trustees to reclaim substantial trust assets claiming that he had been unduly influenced when establishing the trust.
- Inheritance Claim – Advised the Michael Wright family in its high-profile defence of an inheritance claim made against the estate. The estate was estimated at about AU$1 billion, making it the largest case of its kind in Australia.
- Multi-Jurisdictional Trust Restructuring – Advising a trustee in relation to a multi-jurisdictional trust restructuring involving proceedings in London, Guernsey, BVI and the US and complex valuation issues of a range of trading and other assets.
- Breach of Directors' Duties and Knowing Receipt Claims – Advised a HNWI and a Jersey trustee in relation to a Cayman Islands derivative claim brought by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and his corporate investment company, Renova, in relation to the alleged misappropriation of assets from a private equity fund.
- Breach of Trust – Acted for a leading US bank's Jersey based trust company when faced with multi-faceted claims for breach of trust by members of a high net worth Middle Eastern family.
- Dutch Shareholder Dispute – Advising a divorcee in a high-value dispute in the Netherlands in relation to the unwinding of a joint venture structure with her former husband.
- Breach of Administrators' Duties – Advised a leading bank in a dispute before the Milan Court in respect of claims brought by a trust company and other investors for breach of administrators' duties in relation to a Cayman Islands hedge fund.
- Unfair Prejudice – Advised Valeri Belokon, the minority shareholder of Blackpool Football Club, in relation to an unfair prejudice petition against Owen and Karl Oyston. The case was widely reported as the most valuable in English football history.
- Claim regarding shares in family owned business – Advised a nephew of the family in multifaceted litigation in Germany against his uncle in relation to their high profile sausage business.