Experience

I help clients with their difficult commercial and governance issues, always recognising that these are human as well as legal matters. I particularly enjoy the challenge of structuring new ventures and finding the best ways to implement my clients’ great ideas. And I like to find the paths around and through apparent blockages. My clients are charities and non-profit organisations of all kinds as well as individuals and commercial companies engaging in philanthropy.

Highlights
  • Kids Company (Official Receiver v Atkinson and others [2021] EWHC 175) I advised the majority of the former Kids Company trustees in their successful defence of the Official Receiver’s disqualification proceedings and in relation to the Charity Commission inquiry
  • Lehtimäki and others v Cooper [2020] UKSC 33 I advised Jamie Cooper on her successful appeal to the Supreme Court, securing a grant of $360M for her charity and clarifying the law on fiduciary duties of charitable company members
  • The Human Dignity Trust v The Charity Commission for England and Wales (CA/2013/0013) This charity brings international human rights law to bear around the world in challenging the criminalisation of consensual homosexual conduct. We succeeded in the First Tier Tribunal in overturning the Charity Commission’s refusal to register.
  • ASDA Stores Limited I advise ASDA on its prominent charity partnerships and campaigns.
  • Reorganisation of Charity Bank This complex transaction involved converting a bank, which was also a charity, into a non-charity so that it could comply with new regulations on bank capital. All this without having charitable trusts imposed on the capital.
  • A global fashion brand I recently advised on the structuring of this company’s international philanthropy, the establishment of a corporate foundation in the UK and the relationships between the commercial entities and foundations in other jurisdictions.
  • International Planned Parenthood Federation I supported this international charity (established by a UK Act of Parliament) through a global governance change
  • Royal National Institute of Blind People It’s an unpleasant business being subject to a statutory inquiry from a regulator. In RNIB’s case, which concerned its specialist care and education provision, this involved not only the Charity Commission but also Ofsted. RNIB is back on sound footing.