Rick is Co-Head of the Fraud and Insolvency team. Rick specialises in complex, high value cross-border fraud and insolvency matters, including those which involve claims for breach of contract, fraud and/or breach of fiduciary duties and asset tracing. He has also worked on a number of offshore trust matters in the Caribbean, Gibraltar and elsewhere. He regularly deals with and instructs investigators and offshore lawyers. Rick Brown is based in the London office and is also BVI qualified. Rick has considerable experience in acting for insolvency practitioners, mainly on contentious complex cross-border insolvency matters. He has valuable experience of interlocutory hearings and trials in the Commercial Court in the British Virgin Islands and elsewhere in the Caribbean and has significant experience acting for clients on claims involving parties from China, Russia and the Former Soviet Union, as well as the Middle East.

Natalie has expertise in litigation and arbitration involving banking and financial services, insolvency, trust, contractual, partnership, shareholder and commercial disputes.  She has a particular specialism in fraud and asset recovery and has acted on some high profile Russian and CIS cases.  She has worked on multi-jurisdictional asset tracing cases, including obtaining extensive Worldwide Freezing, Search, Disclosure and Passport Surrender Orders in one of Russia’s biggest ever alleged bank frauds.

Natalie is on the list of Supervising Solicitors and has hands on experience of working on highly contested search orders involving multiple parties.  She recently assisted the Civil Procedure Rules Committee with the drafting of the new precedent Imaging Order.

Natalie typically advises on cases involving fraud, breach of trust, deceit, misrepresentation and conspiracy.  She has acted for a wide range of international clients ranging from insolvency practitioners, a pension provider subject to a pensions’ liberation fraud, creditors of a ponzi scheme, minority shareholders in a large high street brand, an investment bank, a commodities trading entity, to state appointed liquidators of banks in significant claims to recover proceeds of fraud.  Cases often have an international element and involve interim relief applications, jurisdiction challenges, enforcement of awards/orders and asset tracing.

Background

Natalie qualified as a lawyer in England and Wales in 2005 having obtained an LLB Law with German Law Hons from King’s College London and her LPC (distinction) from the College of Law.  She trained and qualified at SJ Berwin LLP.  She has worked in the litigation teams at Lawrence Graham LLP, Signature Litigation LLP and Taylor Wessing LLP.  She joined civil fraud boutique PCB Litigation LLP (which subsequently became PCB Byrne) and was made up to partner in 2019.  Natalie joined Cooke, Young and Keidan LLP in April 2022.

What the legal directories say

The Legal 500 (2022) edition recognises Natalie as a Next Generation Partner in Civil Fraud and Commercial Litigation and recommends her for Banking Litigation.

The Legal 500 describes Natalie as “a hard working, knowledgeable and client oriented practitioner”, “personable, professional and user friendly”, “great to work with, always on top of the detail” and as “a junior partner who is one to watch. Great management of the case team and extremely good at telling the client how it is”.  She is “known for [her] strategic thinking and [is] client-oriented” and has “excellent control of her cases and is an excellent leader”.

In The Legal 500 2020 edition, Natalie is identified as a key lawyer for civil fraud and in the 2021 edition, she is also identified as a key lawyer for Commercial Litigation and Banking Litigation and is described as “creative in approach [with] excellent client communication”.

Professional groups

Natalie is Honorary Secretary of the London Solicitors Litigation Association and is on the Founding Committee for next generation practitioners for Thought Leaders4 Disputes and the IWIRC European Networks Steering Committee.

Her professional memberships include the Law Society of England and Wales, Commercial Fraud Lawyers Association, Thought Leaders4 FIRE and RAIIDAR International (Recovering Assets, Insolvency, Investigations, Disputes and Restructuring).

Publications, articles and seminars

Natalie is a member of Lexis PSL’s Case Analysis Expert Panel on Dispute Resolution and regularly writes case summaries for that publication.  She is co-editor of the England and Wales chapter of “Enforcement of Foreign Judgments”.  She is actively involved in responding to legal consultations for the LSLA.

She has had numerous speaking engagements including the annual ABA/RAA Conference on the resolution of CIS-related disputes, The Law Society’s English Law Week in Russia and on numerous Thought Leaders4 webinars.

Adam Garside is a forensic accountant and Director in Control Risks’ forensics practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Based in London, Adam has nearly 20 years of experience leading investigations into accounting irregularities, fraud, bribery and corruption and helping clients set-up, monitor and enhance their compliance programmes. 

Adam has worked in-house for a FTSE100 energy company and a Magic Circle law firm. Having conducted investigations on the ground in over 15 countries, he has gained extensive experience in investigation planning and management under privilege; securing evidence, investigative analysis; leading witness and subject interviews; and reporting to clients, legal counsel and other stakeholders.

Adam has been ranked by Who's Who Legal as a Future Leader in Investigations and serves as an Advisory Panel member to the Association of Corporate Investigators and a Steering Committee member to the South West Fraud Forum. He is also a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.