Our clients include entrepreneurs, businessmen, traditionally wealthy families, trustees and private banks, from the UK and around the world. Their interests include privately-owned companies, financial businesses, property, racehorses, art, yachts and planes. Maurice Turnor Gardner LLP advises them on UK and international trust, estate and tax planning issues. We aim to help our clients achieve their objectives, including protecting and preserving their wealth for future generations, using trusts and other international asset holding structures including companies, foundations, funds and partnerships. Practising in association with Allen & Overy LLP, we are also able to draw, as appropriate, on their global expertise to provide seamless, tailored solutions for our clients, involving first rate banking, regulatory, corporate tax, employment, real estate and corporate law advice.
"Boutique firm Maurice Turnor Gardner LLP is a quality outfit that continues to grow, taking on three new solicitors in 2010. The team handles sophisticated trust and tax planning for international and domestic clients, and includes luminaries Clare Maurice, Arabella Murphy (née Saker), Richard Turnor, Jennifer Chambers, and Emma-Jane Weider, and rising star Tessa Hulton." Legal 500 UK 2012
"They've taken a top-drawer practice competing directly with the very best and put it into a boutique format." Chambers Global, 2010
Partnerships and limited liability partnerships are best known as structures for professional services firms, but also have a diverse range of other commercial and private uses, both in the UK and around the world. Maurice Turnor Gardner, itself a limited liability partnership, advises many traditional professional partnerships and LLPs about their constitutional documents, governance, international structure, LLP conversion and disputes, as well as fund managers structured as LLPs. Our team also has wide experience of advising on highly innovative uses of partnership and LLP structures in structured finance and corporate transactions generally.
Legal 500 UK 2011 says of our top ranked partnership practice “Maurice Turnor Gardner LLP’s professional services practice delivers advice in a manner “that is engaging and responsive and puts other firms to shame”….Richard Turnor leads a team that is “at the cutting edge” of partnership issues affecting the professional services industry”.
Our team, recently enhanced with the arrival of two litigation partners, has litigated, mediated and settled a wide variety of disputes, in England and Wales and in offshore jurisdictions. We have particular expertise in pensions disputes including rectification applications and professional negligence claims against scheme actuaries, solicitors, investment advisers and scheme administrators. We have significant experience of trust and probate disputes, and regularly act for trustees and beneficiaries of onshore and offshore trusts in a range of matters including allegations of breach of trust and/or fiduciary duty, proceedings for the removal of trustees, tax-related disputes and enquiries, and applications for directions.
Members of the team have been involved in a number of high-profile cases including: Kostic v Chapman (challenge to the validity of a will), Birley v Birley (challenge to the validity of a will), Precis (521) v William M Mercer Limited (duties of care owed by actuaries) and Low & Bonar plc v Mercer Limited (validity of amendments to scheme documentation).
The charity and not-for-profit sector is an important economic sector in its own right. It responds to developments in society and is constantly testing the boundaries of legal practice. Major corporates are increasingly working with charities on philanthropic projects as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes. In addition, given the increase in size and financial sophistication of many charities, financial institutions are increasingly looking to develop financial products tailored to the sector. Unlike many niche advisers, Maurice Turnor Gardner LLP has unparalleled expertise in all these matters, and can additionally draw (as required) on the skills of our associated firm, Allen & Overy LLP, where, for example, corporate, regulatory or banking advice may be required. We use our knowledge and skills to advise charities on constitutional, governance and other issues; families, corporates and banks on charitable giving/social responsibility and creating charitable foundations; and financial institutions on investment and banking products and services for the third sector. In addition, we have a unique practice specialising in chartered corporations, a legal not-for-profit entity peculiar to English law, and our clients in this sector include many of the best known professional institutes, universities and other institutions established by Royal Charter.
"Maurice Turnor Gardner LLP has a diverse client list including a significant portfolio of clients incorporated by Royal Charter, and high-net-worth individuals, whom the team advise on cross-border charitable giving. The ‘experienced’ Ceris Gardner heads the team, and Robert Bulling is noted for his expertise in dealing with bodies governed by Royal Charter. The team provides ‘wise, useful, pragmatic and articulate’ advice." Legal 500 UK 2012