Carey Olsen winner at The Lawyer Awards 2014

Wednesday 02 July 2014

Carey Olsen has been recognised as Offshore Firm of the Year by The Lawyer Magazine annual awards that celebrates excellence in the legal profession across private practice, the public sector, commerce and industry.

Selected by The Lawyer's editorial team from a high number of entries, Carey Olsen was presented with this impressive award for acting for the winning parties in a ground-breaking decision issued by Guernsey's Royal Court. This landmark case involved UK non-domiciliary, wealthy entrepreneur Robert Tchenguiz and one of the offshore trust structures in which his assets are held ("the Tchenguiz Discretionary Trust").

Carey Olsen represented Grant Thornton's Stephen Akers and Mark McDonald who had been appointed as joint liquidators of some of the companies involved in the Tchenguiz structure in relation to substantial loan arrangements which had been created and are now judgment creditors for over £183 million, with interest accruing at the rate of over £40,000 per day.

The court’s judgment broke new ground in the Channel Islands which led to Carey Olsen persuading the Royal Court to grant what is believed to be the world's first-ever order subrogating the creditors to the trustees' rights in the trust assets and an order appointing receivers over the dynamic trust assets (with the exception of one UK property) pending determination of any appeal.

The Lawyer award recognises that Carey Olsen’s market-leading trust litigation team specialises in this highly complex area of law and is able to provide clients with "QC" levels of advocacy and "magic circle" levels of case management services.

One of The Lawyer Awards judges commented the firm is looking “very impressive – the Tchenguiz case really was landmark and makes their submission surpass that of their peers”.

Carey Olsen managing partner John Greenfield, who led the Tchenguiz litigation team, said: “This case was complex and extremely interesting to work on. The Lawyer award serves to recognise our talented and dedicated litigation group across the firm; it cements our position as a leading offshore law firm.”