Larry is a corporate and commercial lawyer who also has significant dispute resolution, reputation management and litigation management experience.
Larry qualified as a lawyer in 1976. After experience as a military lawyer and prosecutor in the Royal Air Force, Larry spent a significant part of his 30 year career as a legal advisor in the energy and natural resources sector.
Larry worked in-house, principally at BP and moved to Moscow in 1996 to work in private practice in the natural resources field. He returned after six years as a Russian speaker and a partner with Lovells, heading the firm’s Russia and CIS energy and natural resources practice, prior to setting up his own legal consultancy.
As General Counsel to commodities trader Trafigura from 2007 to 2011, Larry gained unique experience in the management of the litigation related to the Probo Koala incident in Ivory Coast involving multi-party actions and multi-million dollar claims and criminal and other proceedings in Abidjan, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Houston and Oslo. This included arbitration and litigation and the management of the defence of the largest English group action to date. Larry also handled much of the media management related to the legal proceedings arising from the Ivory Coast claims and proceedings.
Larry’s experience includes acting as external corporate General Counsel and providing specialist legal advice to small and medium sized businesses.
Accreditations and Memberships
- Solicitor – Rights of Audience (Higher Courts, All Proceedings)
- Middle Temple (Barrister – non-practising)
- CEDR accredited Mediator
- BRLA – British Russian Law Association
- BKLA – British-Kazakh Law Association
- PhD – Thesis from research on the use of media by claimant law firms in Group Litigation
Larry’s practice includes:
- Dispute Resolution and litigation management
- Reputation Management (domestic and international including in group litigation)
- Corporate law including structuring, joint ventures, shareholder disputes
- Oil trading, oil refining, crude and products marketing and logistics, used oil recovery and recycling
- Non-Ferrous metals trading
Commodity and Corporate Finance - Fruit and juice trading and logistics
- Water purification
- Wind power generation
- Intellectual Property licensing and franchising