Specialist team:
Private Client
Experience:
Mark specialises in providing international estate planning, trusts and taxation advice. He has particular expertise in working with US, Latin American, French, Russian and Scandinavian clients, family limited partnerships and clients working in the hedge fund and private equity sectors.
Chambers Global 2010 ranks Mark as a leading individual for international private client work and describes him as having an “ability to come up with new and cutting-edge ideas.” Legal 500 2010 describes Mark as having “US/UK expertise”. In 2009 Mark was also included in Private Client Practioner’s ‘35 under 35’ leading professionals in private client work and in 2010 he received the STEP President’s Prize for taxation and was included in Dow Jones’ 40 under 40 European most influential wealth advisers in Europe and in Legal Experts.
Significant recent work includes:
- advising a European family on resettling into offshore trusts private trading businesses and portfolio assets worth in excess of £500m. Tax changes in the home country of the family caused UK resident non-domiciled young unmarried adult children to have to resettle the assets. A complex series of trusts, foundations and private trusts companies were used to provide a novel structure intended to be robust from the dual threats of divorce and UK taxation
- advising a leading UK resident Scandinavian environmental venture capitalist with US family members on restructuring his offshore trusts and companies for UK tax efficiency for his investments and US tax efficiency for his intended beneficiaries
- advising the family office of a US billionaire on the transatlantic tax structuring of the English divorce of a family member. The structuring included a novel strategy to transfer the London family home to the non-US spouse without triggering US income tax on the significant capital gains
- advising on the UK tax efficient financing and structuring of purchases and sales of substantial London residential and commercial properties for wealthy US and other international clients
Mark publishes in a range of industry publications and presents regularly at seminars and conferences. He is a member of the Society of Trusts and Estates Practitioners (STEP), the International Bar Association (IBA) and the International Tax Planning Association (ITPA).
Mark joined Speechly Bircham in 2004. He obtained his degree in Chemistry from Imperial College, London and also studied at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris.