Judges

Chair of the Judging Panel 

Shân Warnock-Smith QC TEP, 5 Stone Buildings

Shân Warnock-Smith Q.C. is both an adviser and a litigator in the whole range of trust and succession matters. She is ranked among the leading Silks in her field and has appeared in a number of the most important private client cases of recent years. Shân has an international practice, taking her around the globe to advise and to litigate both in UK and elsewhere. She specialises in wealth structuring for international families, with and without the involvement of the court. Shân is also a specialist mediator of trust and succession disputes.

Judging Panel

Alan Barr TEP, Brodies LLP

Alan Barr is a tax and trust partner at Brodies LLP, winners of the UK Regional Legal Team of the year award in 2009/10. He is the director of the Legal Practice Unit at the University of Edinburgh and a frequent speaker and author on a very wide variety of estate planning, trust and tax matters. He is a co-author of Drafting Willis in Scotland, a leading practical textbook on the subject.

Andrew Rodger, Stonehage

Andrew is an Executive Director of the Stonehage Group and heads the Stonehage Family Office. Andrew joined Stonehage in 2006 after working for thirteen years as a practising Barrister in London.

Andrew qualified as a Barrister in 1993 after graduating with honours from the School of Law, King's College University of London. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 2004 and accredited as a CEDR mediator in 2004.

David Kilshaw TEP, KPMG UK

David is Head of KPMG’s Private Client Group and has nearly 25 years experience of advising clients on personal tax matters.
  
David advises on all aspects of personal taxation including capital gains tax, inheritance tax and trust planning, but with particular  emphasis on structuring to ensure tax efficiency.

David has acted in a number of expert witness cases, and has appeared in court twice. The first case was a CGT and non-domiciled status case and the second case related to tax planning and a family company.

David also comments on tax issues in the press and lectures regularly to clients and professional audiences. He has been listed as a member of the Citywealth top 100 wealth advisers every year since 2006 up until 2009, and also included in their top 10 UK tax accountants.  In 2007 David was voted Spears’ Private Client accountant of the year. KPMG also won the Best UK Private Client Advisers in the 2009 Euromoney Banking Survey and the STEP 2009/10 Private Client Accountancy Award.

John Conder TEP, Macfarlanes LLP

Jonathan Conder is the head of private client at Macfarlanes. He advises UK and international private clients and trustees on all aspects of tax, trust, estate and succession planning and on philanthropic matters.

Typical clients range from high net worth individuals and their families coming to the UK from abroad to take advantage of the favourable tax regime for non-domiciliaries, to UK-based entrepreneurs, taking in the trusts, other structures and financial instruments such clients use to hold their business interests or manage their wealth.

Jonathan Lee TEP, Pearson Jones Plc

Jonathan Lee trained with Grant Thornton before joining Pearson Jones in 2001.  Jonathan qualified as a Trust and Estate Practitioner in 2008 and currently manages the Tax and Trust Department of Pearson Jones plc, who were awarded International IFA of the Year award in the 2009/10 STEP Private Client Awards.  The department currently advises on over 400 Trust funds worth more than £600m. Jonathan lives in Yorkshire and has three children.

Julien Dif TEP, Bonnard Lawson

Since October 2009, Julien Dif has been a partner with Geneva law firm Bonnard Lawson. He is more particularly active in the Banking and Private Client Services departments of the Firm. He was called to the Luxembourg Bar in 2001 and to the Geneva Bar in 2007, after completing an LL.B in English law at King's College London and a Maîtrise in French law at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Katie Booth TEP, Butterfield International Private Office Ltd

Katie is a trust lawyer with 17 years experience in the private client arena. After seven years as an Executive Director at Rothschild Trust, Katie left in October 2007 to launch Butterfield International Private Office in London, a business dedicated to the structuring of private wealth on a global basis. Katie specialises in the incorporation, management and administration of private trust companies for international families and offers advice on the formation of single family offices and family governance structures.

Katie was a founding member and Chairman of the Bahamas Branch of STEP. She launched the STEP Caribbean Conference Programme and is
a former STEP Council Member. In 2009, Katie won Citywealth Woman of
the Year and at the STEP Private Client Awards Butterfield were voted Institutional Trust
Company Team of the Year.

Kecia Barkawi-Hauser TEP, VALUEworks

Kecia has over 15 years of experience in the family office and charity business. Before founding VALUEworks, an international estate planning boutique, in 2004 Kecia worked for GAM, both in Zurich and Bermuda, as a trust lawyer and thereafter was a vice president and head of the technical commission at STG (formerly STG Coopers & Lybrand) in Zurich. Kecia has a Master of Law from the University of Zurich and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. She is the president of SATC, the Swiss Association of Trust Companies, served on the Committee of STEP in Switzerland and is a founding member of the Zurich Roundtable of Philanthropy.

Penny Lovell, Rothschild

Penny joined Rothschild as a Client Director in 2009.   Penny was previously at FF&P where she provided wealth management advice to families, next generation training and  financial planning support.
 
Penny is a Trustee of  Royal Academy Schools, a member of the UK Advisory Board for Room to Read and sits on the Development Board of the Philharmonia Orchestra. She is also a Trustee of the Princes Foundation for Children and the Arts and The Pennies Foundation.

Rosemary Marr TEP

Rosemary Marr TEP is Vice President of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP). She has been involved in the financial services industry in the UK and Jersey for approximately 30 years with significant experience gained at director and Managing Director level of both banking and non-banking trust company businesses. Latterly she has acted as a consultant to an international trust group and is presently establishing a business which will offer consultancy and associated services to trust companies and related businesses as well as to intermediaries. Rosemary is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, having originally qualified with the ACIB (Trustee) qualification and is an Accredited Mediator.

Russell Bussey

Russell has only ever worked in Private Client departments and has over 17 years experience in the investment industry. He has acted for many types of clients dealing with UK domiciled, non-resident domiciled and international and cross border issues. Having worked for UBS and Credit Suisse in senior positions, as well as pitching against his peers, he is well placed in commenting on the solutions business models and services provided by the investment industry for Private Clients both UK and International. He has held many workshops on investment management and private banking especially in the offshore jurisdictions.

Russell has extensive contacts both in the UK and European professional
market place and works closely with Family Offices and Trustees as well as
individuals.

Simon McKie TEP, McKie & Co (Advisory Services) LLP 

Simon McKie is the Chairman of McKie & Co (Advisory Services) LLP, the leading consultancy specialising in providing advice on the taxation of private clients.

He is a former chairman of the Faculty of Taxation.  He is currently a member of the Technical Committee of STEP and of the CIOT’s Succession Taxes and Capital Gains Tax and Investment Income sub-committees.

He is a well known lecturer and writer on taxation. He is a member of the editorial board of Taxation and is the Capital Gains Tax correspondent of
Private Client Business. His works include The Capital Gains Taxation of
Non-Resident Settlements (Sweet & Maxwell), McKie on Reinvestment
Relief (Butterworths) and Tolleys’ Estate Planning. 

Stephen Harris, Wealth Briefing.com

Stephen Harris is the Editorial Director of ClearView Financial Media Ltd, publishers of the leading WealthBriefing, the daily global online news service for wealth managers.

Stephen trained as an accountant in the City but quickly moved over to financial journalism working for the United News & Media Group and Thomson Financial before establishing an independent financial publishing business in 1996.

Stephen has also worked as a hedge fund manager and has been a director of a private client search firm.

Tim Urquhart TEP

Tim Urquhart practised as an English Solicitor for 22 years, as a partner in an English firm, responsible for the creation and development of the firm's European Practice.

Tim specialised in private wealth structuring and cross-border aspects of taxation. Retiring from practice in 1994 Tim joined Rothschild Trust Group in Switzerland where he became CEO and a member of the Executive Board of Rothschild Bank in Switzerland.

Tim retired from Rothschild's in January 2008 and is now a Trust Consultant
in Zurich.

Vanessa Houlder, Financial Times

Vanessa Houlder has been part of the FT’s economics team, specialising in tax issues, since 2003.  She has worked as a journalist on the Financial Times since 1988 covering, in turn,  British companies, the commercial property industry, technology, management and the environment.

Before joining the FT, Vanessa worked for the Investors Chronicle for two years. She has a degree in Natural Sciences and a post-graduate certificate in journalism.

Awards Secretary

Keith Johnston STEP 

Keith Johnston is Director of Policy and Communications at the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) and focuses on international lobbying.

Keith lobbies international institutions and national governments on legal, tax and regulatory matters affecting professional private client advisors. This includes initiatives by the OECD, the EU, FATF, and the UK and US governments. He is a member of the EU Expert Panel on the Savings Tax Directive and the FATF private sector liaison group. He previously worked as a lobbyist for the lighting and housing sectors and as a voluntary parliamentary assistant. Keith is also editor-in-chief of the STEP Journal and
editor of STEP's online training, STEP TV, as well as Director of Philanthropy.

Panel of Experts

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