One to watch: HBJ Gateley Wareing

Birmingham-headquartered HBJ
Gateley Wareing is a full commercial law firm, but has
distinguished itself by its expertise in various elements of asset
finance, particularly marine finance and litigation. The shipping
and transport part of the business is primarily based in London,
but also operates from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dubai.

The initial rationale for the Dubai office,
according to the firm, was to aid in handling transactions for
construction and shipping clients. Now, however, it operates there
as a full service law firm, with particularly successful records as
far as the asset finance litigation team is concerned.

The law firm merged with yacht finance
specialist Shaw and Croft in 2007, and last year it also joined
forces with Holmes Hardingham, another well-known transport law
firm.

“We have brought those together with our own
team. Earlier this year we opened a united London office where all
the teams sit and work together, and shipping finance and insurance
are an especially important part of the business,” said
communication manager Perry Buck.

The shipping team has a lot of expertise in
Islamic finance – last year it did a £50 million (€55 million)
Islamic finance deal for eight new ships – as well as yacht
finance, where HBJ-GW acts for a number of super-yacht owners.

However, the general asset finance team –
headed by James Baird – focuses particularly on litigation.

“We have a particular reputation in advising
financiers when they discover that they have been defrauded,” Baird
said.

“For the last 12 months we have seen increased
levels of fraud and requests from our clients to assist in those
situations.”

In this area, says Baird, the firm is
distinguished by two key elements. The first is its responsiveness,
while the second is its capability to offer a non-standard
proceeding.

“We find if you have a direct conversation
with debtors at the earliest opportunity, you can quite often
achieve a negotiated settlement,” Baird explained.

“We point out everybody’s strengths and
weaknesses, and then use that as a lead to negotiate a settlement,
and we can do that with or without litigation running
alongside.”

Baird said frauds can have an “international
element”, due to the fact equipment is often shipped or absconded
abroad. Therefore, the firm regularly has to locate people and
assets in other jurisdictions, which may or not involve issuing
proceedings to recover the assets. He is convinced fraud will
continue to be an issue in the future.

He said: “At an FLA conference 18 months ago I
was asked what would be the big topic for the industry in the next
few years, I said ‘fraud’. That seems to have been a correct
view.”

“If you were to ask me the same question now,
I would say there will still be a fairly high incidence of frauds,
as the recession in the real economy begins to have a deepening
effect.”