Stephen Baker
Managing Partner, Jersey
Commercial & Civil Disputes
Our team has a leading reputation for resolving high-value and complex commercial and civil disputes in Jersey, the Cayman Islands and the BVI.
Contents
Problem
Offshore centres like Jersey, Cayman and BVI are often part of the picture in international commercial disputes. Many companies, funds, trusts and other asset-holding entities are established in those jurisdictions. Disputes involving those entities have to be litigated there. Injunctions affecting assets held by those entities have to be obtained there. Most people are unfamiliar with these jurisdictions and may be daunted by litigating there.
Solved
From urgent injunctive relief and preliminary dispute advice to full-scale litigation and asset recovery, Baker & Partners delivers strategic, jurisdiction-specific representation.
We specialise in targeted injunctions to obtain information and freeze assets in support of claims.
We represent multinational corporations (including listed and private companies), investors, financial institutions, insolvency practitioners and management teams. We regularly work alongside international accountancy firms and onshore counsel.
Baker & Partners provides clarity, confidence and courtroom expertise to protect your position and secure timely, practical results.
Practice Areas
- Civil fraud claims
- Freezing and disclosure injunctions, to trace and secure assets
- Enforcement of foreign judgments and arbitral awards
- Claims against directors
- Shareholder, joint venture and partnership disputes
- Unfair prejudice petitions
- Just and equitable winding up petitions
- Breach of contract claims
- Fund disputes
- Banking disputes
- Employment disputes
- High value personal injury
- Civil litigation arising from regulatory action
- Litigation related to cryptocurrencies, NFTs, DAOs, and blockchain technology
Why you should work with Baker & Partners
- Being a genuinely conflict-free law firm with no transactional arm means our advice and advocacy is entirely independent and your interests always come first.
- We are specialist court advocates with a proven track record of acting in high-value, complex disputes, for claimants and defendants. We act for individuals, states, companies and financial service providers.
- We fight cases and we win. But we also make full use of mediation, negotiations and settlements to get clients the right result.
- We are approached directly by international clients or by their advisers. We are experienced in instructing and being instructed by top-tier onshore counsel in coordinated, cross-border disputes.
- Our expertise spans litigation, arbitration, regulatory investigations, asset recovery, contentious insolvency and criminal matters.
- Every instruction receives a tailored response, because we understand that no two situations, or clients, are alike. We combine in-depth legal knowledge with practical strategy and commercial expertise, ensuring our approach is always focused on the client’s commercial aims.
- We are Legal 500 ranked for Dispute Resolution for all three of our offshore teams, including more than a decade as Tier 1 for Jersey.
Representative Work
- Represented RTI Limited, a company within the Rusal Group, in challenging the enforcement in Jersey of a multi-million euro arbitration award granted by the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA). The case raised complex cross-border public-policy issues arising from differences between the Jersey, UK, US and EU sanctions regimes.
- We act for Luxembourg companies in a conspiracy claim in Jersey against a number of defendants, including lawyers and litigation funders, arising from a $12bn+ arbitral award made by a Spanish arbitrator who was subsequently sentenced to prison for breaching orders of the Spanish court by moving the arbitration to France after his appointment had been annulled.
- Acted as lead BVI counsel to the liquidators of sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, including the filing of legal claims amounting to more than USD 1 billion against corporate services provider Amicorp Group alleging their historic involvement in the defrauding of the sovereign wealth fund.
- Acted for a claimant in a high value personal injury claim arising from a 12-storey fall on a construction site. The judgment established important Jersey law principles on employers’ non-delegable duties of care and shared liability between defendants. The company that was responsible for installing the platform was subsequently prosecuted in the Royal Court and fined £100,000 for breaching the Health and Safety Law.
- In Pender v Punter Southall Group Limited [2026] JCA039 Baker & Partners represents the majority investor in a long-running, multi-million-pound unfair prejudice claim brought by a former director and minority shareholder. Following a five-week trial, the dispute has centred on the highly complex valuation of a high growth insurance company, with expert assessments differing by hundreds of millions of pounds, and bringing into question hindsight valuations within commercial disputes.
Key People
Employer’s liability for personal injury: Abreu v RS Reinforcements & CNR Construction
Baker & Partners’ Simon Thomas (Partner) and James Wood (Associate) acted in a recent case before the Royal Court clarifying Employer’s liability for accidents.
Simon Thomas
Partner, Jersey
Best practices to secure a Jersey deferred prosecution agreement
Entering previously uncharted waters with a piece of new untested legislation that requires candid disclosure of criminal breaches together with the supporting evidence to the Attorney General is not for the faint-hearted.
Simon Thomas
Partner, Jersey
