Commercial

11KBW provides advocacy and advisory services in commercial dispute resolution with a particular focus on commercial contract disputes, civil fraud, business protection, company and partnership law.

Our members are recognised as outstanding advocates with particular experience both of injunctive work and heavy trials.  Many of our cases concern the breakdown of shareholder, partnership, LLP, joint venture or employment relationships, often involve allegations of breaches of fiduciary duty, conspiracy and fraud, and require asset tracing and injunctions.

A significant part of our practice is international in character.  We regularly appear in overseas jurisdictions and in arbitrations with overseas seats, often in conjunction with local counsel.  We welcome instructions from in-house counsel and overseas lawyers, in addition to our work with domestic law firms.

In addition to our regular work in the Chancery and Queen’s Bench Divisions of the High Court, and the Commercial Court, we have considerable appellate and arbitral experience.  Our juniors also regularly appear in County Court matters.

Commercial contract: members of 11KBW advise on and litigate in a wide range of commercial contract matters, in both the civil courts and a range of arbitral forums. We regularly deal with issues such as construction, rectification, misrepresentation agency, restitution, penalties and restraint of trade particularly in the context of business sale agreements, shareholder agreements and commercial agency agreements. We have a particular specialism in dealing with disputes concerning bonuses, share-schemes, and business sales.  For further details, see our commercial contract webpage.

Civil fraud: our members appear in a broad range of civil fraud matters, including those involving allegations of breach of fiduciary duty, accessory liability and bribery.  Such cases often involve contested interim injunctive relief (including freezing and search orders), regulatory issues, and matters relating to domestic and international asset tracing and recovery (including the imposition of constructive trusts, piercing the corporate veil and insolvency-based relief).  For further details, see our civil fraud webpage.

Business protection: we are the leading set in litigation designed to protect business interests, including matters relating to team moves, springboard injunctions, parallel trading, diversion of business opportunities, misuse of confidential information, garden leave, post-termination restraints, the economic torts and other unlawful competitive activity. Our work often involves applying for and resisting freezing and search orders in the context of allegations of fraud and other forms of dishonesty.  Our related practice in the use of public law challenges to protect commercial interests, particularly in respect of sanctions, is complementary to our private law expertise in this area.  For further details, see our business protection webpage.

Company and partnership law: we regularly advise on and litigate issues relating to directors’ duties and those of members of both traditional partnerships and LLPs. We also advise and act in shareholder disputes, including unfair prejudice petitions and disputes under shareholder agreements.  We frequently act in issues relating to joint ventures and offshore ownership structures.  For further details, see our company and partnership webpage.

For more detail on these core areas, and our other areas of commercial expertise, please see the individual web pages: