A rundown of the most read articles to feature on eprivateclient this week…
Monday
PAM Insight, producers of the PAM Awards, announced the official launch of the inaugural eprivateclient Excellence Awards programme, focused exclusively on the UK and offshore legal, tax, fiduciary and advisory professions. The awards - recognising the best private client legal, tax, consultancy and trust advisers - will take place on 24 June 2021 at a live virtual gala event.
HMRC’s “most wanted” tax cheat was jailed three years after he fled flew to Lithuania to avoid an HMRC investigation. Svajunas Navagruckas was the ringleader of a plot to smuggle millions of illegal cigarettes and was caught with 8.5 million illegal cigarettes in June 2017. He was arrested when HMRC investigators seized the cigarettes, worth £2.8 million in evaded duty, at a farm in Lincoln. After this, he left the UK while investigations were ongoing and was returned to the UK in July 2020 after being arrested by Lithuanian authorities..
Tuesday
The appetite for basement conversions in London has fallen as the wealthy leave for the countryside according to research from private wealth law firm Boodle Hatfield which found the construction of mega-basement conversions in central London has dropped by almost 40 percent during the pandemic. The number of applications to convert basements in Westminster fell from 99 to just 61 in the year to October. This is more than a 70 percent drop since 2015.
Independent trust and fiduciary services provider VG has - following a series of promotions in January 2021 - further strengthened its management team with two further promotions and a new hire from Intertrust. Within VG’s wealth structuring team, Ben Schofield was promoted to manager, whilst arriving from Intertrust, Christie Barette joined VG as a manager within its wealth structuring team. At the same time, one of VG’s longest standing team members, Paul Bulstrode, was appointed as manager (real estate and Islamic finance - funds).
Wednesday
UK law firms Bishop & Sewell and Monro Wright & Wasbrough (MWW) merged. The merger took effect from 1 February 2021 and the newly combined practice will operate as Bishop & Sewell LLP incorporating Monro Wright & Wasbrough. The merger is part of Bishop & Sewell’s continued planned expansion strategy and will strengthen its private client, property, family and dispute resolution practices and the combined firm will operate from Bishop & Sewell’s offices in Russell Square, London, WC1.
Staying with the M&A theme, London-based international legal search and recruitment firm Fox Rodney launched a specialist mergers division to service the increasing levels of merger activity in the UK legal sector. The firm has seen substantial growth in law firm mergers in recent years and believes that this sector will continue to experience further expansion. Brandon Ransley has been recruited by Fox Rodney to spearhead the growth of its mergers division and has first-hand experience of leading law firm mergers and acquisitions from his roles as managing partner of Dentons UK and previously as managing partner of Howes Percival.
Thursday
KPMG UK chairman Bill Michael quit his role after alleged comments he made during a virtual meeting with staff. He is said to have told employees to “stop moaning” and “playing the victim card” when they raised concerns about working conditions during a virtual staff meeting.
The Channel Islands are in a “stronger economic position” than the UK and are better placed for dealing with economic uncertainty, a new report found. EY’s ITEM Club winter forecast for the Channel Islands said Jersey and Guernsey navigated the economic consequences of the Covid-19 crisis in a way which compares favourably with other jurisdictions. The report cited the fact that even after the fiscal cost of Covid-19, the Jersey government is forecast to have net assets in excess of 100 percent of Gross Value Added (GVA) – the main economic indicator that measures the size of the whole economy. Meanwhile, Guernsey entered the crisis with net assets equivalent to just over a fifth of GVA. In comparison, the UK government’s net debt now exceeds 100 percent of GDP.
Friday
The private client and wealth management profession is often described as a close knit community, but for some it is even closer and with Valentine’s Day this weekend, eprivateclient celebrated some of the industry’s power couples…
Dispute resolution lawyer Rachael Reynolds was appointed global senior partner at Ogier. Ms Reynolds has led Ogier's Cayman litigation team on some of the largest and highest profile cases in the Cayman Islands over the last decade. In her previous role as global head of dispute resolution and head of trusts disputes at Ogier, Ms Reynolds oversaw exponential growth, with the Cayman team tripling in size in response to client demand.