Stephen is a partner in the litigation and arbitration team and leads the global fraud team.
His practice focusses on international asset freezing and recovery cases, heavyweight commercial litigation and regulatory disputes and Stephen is particularly adept at drawing on the firm's tax expertise in such cases to obtain a strategic advantage. More recently, his practice has also developed to encompass tackling fraud involving digital finance, digital assets and cryptocurrency.Stephen also often acts for family offices, successful families, entrepreneurs and their businesses on a broad range of commercial disputes and heads up our family office first group, which is an innovative approach to finding positive solutions for family conflicts.
Recent recognition
Me in a minute
I love this challenge of my specialist area
I own a small vineyard in Somerset and working there at the weekends helps blow away the cobwebs from a week of international fraud litigation and often gives me time to ponder on the right strategy for a case. Producing wine does not pay the bills, so it is lucky that I always wanted to be a lawyer and a litigator at that. In my career at Withers, I soon became drawn to large scale international disputes, mostly involving allegations of fraud or dishonesty.
When clients are affected by a fraud or drawn into 'bet the farm' litigation in several countries, you have to treat the matter like a game of three dimensional chess and plan each move in each jurisdiction accordingly. I love this challenge of my specialist area. In the run up to a big trial I tend to be tee-total, which is challenging when you own a vineyard and frustrating given that I have regularly been involved in some of the largest fraud trials in the English Courts over the last decade.