Continue reading "Offshore Trustees: Are you watching closely?"
Offshore Trustees: Are you watching closely?
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Michael and Philip Noble were brothers who built up a substantial property empire known as the Noble Organisation. It had a complex ownership and management structure involving a number of companies and partnerships and certain trusts for the benefit of their respective families. Michael died in 2006. The executors were Philip, his widow Gillian, and John Barnsley (an accountant associated with PricewaterhouseCoopers). There was a demerger of the business side and property side of the Noble Organisation with Philip taking the business assets and Gill taking the property assets. This was ...
In March 2000 a settlor transferred about US$10m to a company registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). In December 2000 the settlor then settled the entire issued share capital of the company upon a BVI discretionary trust. The beneficiaries of the trust were the settlor’s wife and children and the trustee was the defendant company. The trust deed gave the defendant all the powers and immunities set out in what is now the Second Schedule to the Trustee Act (BVI). On the same day in December the defendant and the company entered into an investment management agreemen...
Continue reading "Offshore Trustees: Are you watching closely?"
Privy Council (Lady Hale, Lord Mance, Lord Kerr, Lord Clarke and Sir Robin Auld)
The respondents made claims for breach of trust against the appellant in respect of breaches that occurred in Guernsey at a time when Guernsey customary law governed the duties of Guernsey trustees and also after the introduction of the Trusts (Guernsey) Law 1989 (the 1989 Law), but before that law was amended by the Trusts (Amendment) (Guernsey) Law 1990 (the 1990 Law). The trust instrument included an exoneration clause in respect of negligence by the trustee and ...