Sandip Patel QC

The Aliant® UK office is based in the heart of the commercial and legal districts in Central London. The firm is headed by Sandip Patel QC, a recognised leader in international litigation and cross-border disputes and Muthupandi Ganesan, a qualified Barrister-at-Law in India and England.The firm is dynamic in its approach combining the traditional with the modern, by offering the perfect combination of Queen’s Counsel,  Barristers and Solicitors working in tandem to provide efficient and modern legal services.  Our lawyers, Queen’s Counsel, Junior Counsel and Solicitors are all individuals with established practices in their respective fields.

The firm advises businesses and individuals based on substantive experience and commercial awareness to provide bespoke solutions to clients. The firm also has particular expertise in dealing with matters related to Anglo-Indian legal issues.

BUSINESS LAW

From inception to closure or liquidation, if necessary, and everything transactional and operational in-between, Aliant® business lawyers provide legal guidance, transactional expertise and rigorous defence for our clients. In a highly competitive and aggressive business landscape, our lawyers have the know-how and ingenuity to give their clients the best legal guidance in a range of corporate services for both domestic and international cases.

Aliant® includes some of the world’s most reputable lawyers. They provide expert counsel and representation to clients ranging from small, local companies to large multinational corporations. Our lawyers focus on providing the best legal services to local and multi-jurisdictional businesses.

Clients around the world rely on Aliant® to counsel them on:

• Mergers and acquisitions (including joint ventures and strategic alliances)
• Company formation and expansion
• Private equity
• Finance (including transactional, institutional, and international finance)
• Restructuring, insolvency and bankruptcy
• Mediation and arbitration
• Private and publicly traded investment funds
• Investment management
• Structured transactions
• Legal defence
• Securities (including public and private equity and debt offerings)
• Corporate governance and shareholder activism
• Emerging business and technology transactions
• Outsourcing and strategic commercial transactions
• Energy transactions
• Real estate
• Tax matters

CORPORATE AND CIVIL LITIGATION AND ARBITRATION

Aliant® corporate and civil litigation lawyers are focused first on dispute prevention, but when litigation is necessary, they are experts at guiding clients through conflict and adversity. Our team includes strong and savvy negotiators who strive to resolve legal issues through arbitration and mediation, whenever possible. If that is not possible, however, we are relentless litigators who stop at nothing to provide our clients with the best defence possible. Aliant® corporate and civil litigation lawyers are experienced at representing clients in all types of legal matters in courts around the world.

Areas of litigation and arbitration guidance include:

• Corporate conflicts
• Unfair competition
• Actions for contractual and non-contractual liability
• National and international arbitration
• Insurance and reinsurance
• Civil and commercial contracts
• Family and inheritance processes

LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Corporate mergers and acquisitions are typically some of the most important transactions in the life of a business. Even the most straightforward merger is bound to have elements that are challenging. Add the complexity that comes with an international deal, and the stakes get even higher. Aliant® corporate lawyers are experts at both local and international mergers and acquisitions. They are ready to help you confidently navigate the process, from negotiating a memorandum of understanding through handling any post-closing issues that may arise.

Aliant® corporate lawyers successfully handle mergers and acquisitions in the US and around the world. Adept at identifying problems early and developing mitigation strategies, our lawyers structure transactions to protect client interests, fight for the best possible deal, and dig deep into the target company’s affairs in order to uncover and avoid any unpleasant and expensive surprises.

Here are some ways our lawyers assist M&A clients:

• Advise on domestic and international mergers and acquisitions
• Draft memoranda of understanding and letters of intent
• Negotiate domestic and international merger agreements and acquisition agreements
• Structure merger and acquisition transactions to reduce risk
• Conduct due diligence on target companies
• Identify and coordinate with foreign legal counsel where appropriate

BANKING AND FINANCE LAW

Aliant® lawyers provide the financial sector with a variety of legal services. We assist local and foreign banks and financial institutions with business transactions, regulatory compliance, fiduciary obligations, straightforward bank lending, and a variety of financing areas.

Our lawyers offer legal guidance and counsel for corporate mergers as well as organizational and ownership concerns regarding banks, holding companies and other regulated entities. We represent both lenders and borrowers, providing our clients with the best legal representation in negotiations, documentation, compliance, and—if necessary—litigation.

Ways our banking and finance lawyers can assist you:

• Due diligence investigations to verify accuracy of information exchanged between parties
• Negotiations with opposite parties and documentation on deal term agreements
• Structure financing models to ensure compliance with all relevant laws
• Restructuring and exit financing
• Analyze plans based on current and projected market conditions
• Compliance counseling
• Acquisitions, investments, strategic alliances and joint ventures
• Bank regulatory examinations and compliance
• Legal representation and defense in legal proceedings
• Implementation and evaluation of bank marketing, cross-selling and similar initiatives.

White-collar crime

Our Aliant® white-collar crime team has extensive experience in the management of complex domestic and international criminal litigation.

Operating in London, we advise companies and organisations, corporate executives, senior officers, directors on all phases of white-collar litigation, with particular capabilities handling bribery and corruption, money laundering, fraud, tax, insider-trading, market abuse, sanctions, extradition and corporate manslaughter claims.

We also provide clients with preventative measures and compliance programs designed to reduce the risk of civil and criminal penalties.

Our recent work includes bribery investigations in the oil and gas sectors.

Our areas of work include:

• Antitrust and competition
• Business ethics
• Bribery
• Corporate fraud
• Corporate governance and compliance, including boards and senior management
• Corporate manslaughter
• Corruption
• Disclosure
• Extradition
• Financial institutions
• Internal investigations
• Money laundering
• Regulation and investigations
• Reputation and defamation protection
• Risk advisory
• Sanctions and controls
• Securities regulation and enforcement
• Tax
• Whistleblowing

CIVIL LAW AND CIVIL ASSET RECOVERY

Aliant® civil lawyers are service-oriented and results-driven. We are there when you need us for legal matters great and small, providing acute legal guidance that is customized and local. Meanwhile, our international network is standing ready to deliver cross-border representation that is second to none. Far-reaching in scope, capability, and geography, Aliant® lawyers provide legal services to both individuals and corporations using a collaborative approach that taps a wealth of expertise from a stable of internationally acclaimed transactional lawyers and litigators. Through communication, collaboration, and customization we deliver the best legal representation in civil law across borders.

Some of the civil law services we offer are:

• Commercial
• Real estate
• Business
• Contractual

ASSET PROTECTION, TRUST DEVELOPMENT, AND ESTATE PLANNING

Asset protection across borders. Estate planning and trust administration. Wealth transfer tax minimization. These are just a few of the ways Aliant® estate planning lawyers help clients plan for the future. In estate planning, the objectives are deeply personal, and each case is unique. That’s why Aliant® lawyers are skilled at developing customized strategies and finding the best solutions to difficult legal questions, such as:

What is the best way to pass a business to children?

How should an estate be structured to accomplish both family and charitable objectives?

Should assets be retained in a trust or distributed outright?

How can worldwide taxation be minimized and asset value be maximized?

We help our clients formulate their objectives, line up ownership structures for business and personal assets, set up buy-sell agreements, complete trust structures, and take advantage of the shifting international tax regime. For multinational families, where the tax laws of more than one country can create onerous and unfair tax results, the complexity of estate planning deepens and the need for local expertise intensifies. By working in teams, Aliant® trust and estate lawyers from around the world work together to help clients optimise all of their planning objectives.

Ways our asset protection and estate planning lawyers assist clients:

• Drafting wills and trusts for domestic and cross-jurisdictional asset ownership
• Structuring business succession
• Structuring wealth transfer to minimize taxation
• Asset protection planning
• Local and multinational trust and estate administration
• Income and estate tax treaty planning
• Research, analysis, and legal opinion letters

COMMERCIAL LAW, COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS AND AGREEMENTS

Anticipating supply and distribution problems, negotiating commercial contracts, advising on sales and purchase agreements – these are just a sampling of the services Aliant® lawyers provide for our international client base. But expertise in the law relating to business transactions is only the minimum criterion for our team. Where Aliant® lawyers really differentiate themselves is in our concierge approach to service. Simply put, we’re here when you need us. You won’t be passed down to a junior associate, or have your needs put on the back burner. You call, we answer. Simple as that.

The complexity and risk associated with business – international business in particular – is well known. You need an attorney who is going to be there for you when questions arise. Aliant® has built a reputation for client-focused operations designed to help business owners succeed. We’ll handle the legal matters that may arise so that you can keep your focus on building your business.

Some of the commercial law services we offer are:

• Negotiate supply and distribution agreements
• Draft purchase order and invoice terms and conditions
• Advise on engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) agreements
• Negotiate equipment design, manufacture, installation and sale agreements
• Negotiate long-term vessel charter agreements
• Advise on shipbuilding contracts

INTERNATIONAL TAX LAW

From compliance to planning, the tax needs of companies engaged in cross-border business transactions are complex. Navigating them requires expertise and experience. With an international footprint and experience-backed knowledge of local tax law, Aliant® lawyers are deftly positioned to provide clients with tax optimization solutions that account for both global and local consequences.

Our international tax lawyers are highly adept at minimizing taxation of cross-border mergers, acquisitions and dispositions, international joint ventures, and multinational corporate structures. We have broad expertise in tax treaty planning, controlled foreign corporation rules, running transactions through low tax and no tax jurisdictions, and the more esoteric structures, like the “Double-Dutch sandwich.”

We work with multinational corporations, sovereign fund investment vehicles, private equity funds, hedge funds, opportunity funds, mutual funds, real estate funds, tax-exempts, and private foundations, in addition to the many other types of legal entities and investment vehicles that are found around the world.

Some of the tax law services we offer are:

• Structuring M&A, joint venture and other domestic and cross-border business transactions
• Structuring multinational corporate structures
• Tax treaty planning
• Avoiding controlled foreign corporation classification
• Avoiding or minimizing global income taxation
• Proactive tax shelter structures
• Advise on compliance issues
• Tax research, analysis, and opinion letters

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Sandip Patel QC FCIArb specialist in corporate, banking and financial service law. He advises clients across a range of industries and geographies, providing proactive and commercial legal advice on a broad range of corporate transactions including restructuring and insolvency, public and private fundraisings, this includes providing ongoing operation, regulatory and compliance services to investment funds and the project management of VCT public transactions requiring compliance with the Listing Rules and Prospectus Rules.

Sandip appears in domestic and international commercial disputes concerning fraud, finance, goods and services, energy and natural resources and construction. He appears in international arbitrations conducted under the rules of various institutions (ICSID, ICC, HKIAC, LCIA) and ad hoc proceedings under the UNCITRAL Rules within civil law and common-law jurisdictions. Sandip appeared recently in a reported international arbitration case on the enforcement in England of a New York Convention award ([2018] EWHC 2713 (Comm)).

Between 2008-2012, Sandip was Principal Crown Counsel at the Crown Prosecution Service and worked directly under the Director of Public Prosecutions (Sir Keir Starmer QC and Alison Saunders). In that capacity, Sandip prosecuted serious cases including among others white collar crime, money laundering, bribery and corruption.

Sandip was instructed in the first Serious Fraud Office bribery prosecution on behalf main defendant awaiting extradition from Cambodia. The case concerned the promotion and selling of “bio fuel” investment products to UK investors by Sustainable Agro Energy plc.

Sandip has advised governments, prosecuting agencies, judges and lawyers on corruption laws, policies and procedures.

He also assists companies on compliance by advising, auditing and training on, in particular ISO 37001 for Anti-Bribery Systems and the Bribery Act 2010. 

Sandip has been at the forefront of notable serious and organised cybercrime cases including ‘DarkMarket’, ‘the Facebook Hacker’, prosecution of members of ‘Anonymous’ for the hacking of PayPal, Visa, Sony, FBI, CIA, UK NCA, MoD etc, and ‘the boy who almost broke the Internet’.

Sandip is routinely asked to advise and assist in the creation, training and implementation of cyber law enforcement programmes. For example, in Grenada, he devised and implemented a cyber crime training course for investigators, the A-G’s office and judges so as to give effect to new cyber legislation.

Sandip contributed to the leading text book:  Electronic Evidence, 3rd Edition, Stephen Mason

As head of Aliant® the Data Protection Team and Chief Adviser to OSP Cyber Academy, Sandip advises organisations on data laws, privacy, protection, and cyber security. Sandip is Chairperson of the Cybercrime Practitioners’ Association.

In the “Leading silks” list, The Legal 500 United Kingdom guide to outstanding silks nationwide said this about him, “He has a pleasing and reassuring courtroom manner”, “a very good all-round advocate, who is quick on his feet in court”. Described as “a truly exceptional lawyer with a phenomenal eye for detail”.

ADMISSIONS

1991: Middle Temple

2005: Isle of Man

2013: Grenada

APPOINTMENTS

2014: Queen's Counsel

2018: Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators

MEMBERSHIPS

• Chartered Institute of Arbitrators
• International Council for Commercial Arbitration
• Cyber Crime Practitioners’ Association
• Bar Association for Commerce, Finance & Industry
• OECS Bar Association
• European Academy of Law
• Caribbean Lawyer Network
• LexisPSL Expert Panel Member: Dispute Resolution, International Arbitration and Information Law

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