Norton Rose Fulbright named White-Collar Crime Team of the Year

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has been awarded White-Collar Crime Team of the Year at the inaugural Commercial Litigation & Arbitration Awards.

The Awards, hosted by Legal Week in London on November 5, 2019, showcase the most innovative and challenging cases being heard in the UK. They set out to reflect London’s status as one of the leading dispute resolution centres in the world by underlining the depth of talent in the market.

The awards were judged by a panel of senior figures within the UK dispute resolution community.

The White-Collar Crime Team of the Year award recognises the firm’s overall prowess in this practice area and particularly the firm’s successful defence of a client in one of the most high-profile UK cases of the past decade, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) Tesco prosecution.

The firm’s client was acquitted on January 23, 2019 at Southwark Crown Court, London, after the trial judge, having heard all the prosecution witnesses, ruled there was no evidence on which the case could proceed.

The judge’s decision had been appealed by the SFO but three appeal court judges confirmed the ruling of the trial judge and refused the SFO permission to appeal.
Norton Rose Fulbright’s work on this case involved advising the client on criminal, regulatory, corporate governance and employment law issues. The matter concerned complex accountancy issues and highly technical preparation for the jury trial.

The Norton Rose Fulbright team in London was led by partner and head of corporate and white-collar crime Neil O’May and included Pamela Reddy, also partner in the white-collar crime team, corporate disputes and investigation partner Ruth Cowley, corporate partner Jason Moss, employment partner Paul Griffin, and associates Claudia Culley, Tom Hubbard and Tim Jones.

The successful outcome in this case demonstrates the strength of the firm’s corporate and white-collar crime practice, an integral part of its award-winning global investigations practice. The team represents corporates, financial institutions and senior executives in the most complex and high-value domestic and multi-jurisdictional investigations. This includes internal investigations, regulatory investigations and enforcement proceedings, criminal investigations and related prosecutions and related civil litigation.