The Legal 500

This specialist practice is best known as a leading firm in fraud, financial crime, commercial litigation and regulatory work, for which it attracts an impressive client base.

The firm: Peters & Peters was one of the first practices to develop a key multi-disciplinary approach, allowing the firm to build up a high level of expertise across the sectors. Much of its work is high-profile and international in scope, with solicitors providing advice to foreign regulators, worldwide organisations and governments as well as forging close working relationships with overseas law firms.

Types of work undertaken: Commercial litigation: complex international commercial litigation is widely recognised as one of the firm’s core strengths. The type of work is wide ranging: from contentious cases, including trust litigation, contractual disputes to corporate bankruptcy and related insolvency matters. Most recently involved in the Liverpool Football Club Litigation.

Civil fraud and asset tracing: the firm’s dedicated civil fraud and asset tracing team led by our three market leading partners Keith Oliver, Jonathan Tickner and Sarah Gabriel, enjoys a formidable reputation both in the UK and internationally and has strong professional relationships with major service providers throughout the World. The team has extensive experience in the application of emergency procedures, both within and outside the UK jurisdiction, and its parallel sanctions expertise enables it to undertake civil/commercial litigation and criminal/regulatory litigation in tandem. The team conducts internal investigations on behalf of corporations. The firm acts on behalf of the Department of Health and the NHS Counter Fraud and Security Management Service in claims against pharmaceutical companies for price and supply fixing of generic drugs.

Business crime: the firm’s long-standing experience and pre-eminence in the disciplines of commercial fraud and regulatory issues is universally acknowledged. It acts for large organisations in both an investigative and preventative capacity, as well as for many private clients. Cases encompass all forms of corporate fraud, corruption, cross-border issues (including extradition, sanctions and mutual legal assistance), and forensic tax and revenue work. The firm is particularly renowned for dealing with compliance and anti-money laundering issues, crisis management and defence, for both financial institutions and corporates and for the professions. As testament to Peters & Peters’ innovative approach to tackling fraud, it was awarded the ‘Stand Out Firm for Fraud’ accolade in the FT Innovative Lawyers Report 2010.

Bribery and corruption: the firm has been involved in many of the most significant corruption and bribery cases from the last 40 years. Monty Raphael QC, special counsel, is an internationally acknowledged expert in this field and has regularly been called upon to report on the state of UK law by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. He is Author of Blackstone’s Guide to the Bribery Act, (Oxford University Press), published in September 2010. Some of the firm’s most notable bribery and corruption cases include the high-profile SFO investigations of BAE and the al-Yamamah contract, the ‘Cash for Honours’ enquiry, the United Nations’ ‘Oil for Food’ programme and allegations involving countries such as Nigeria, Indonesia and the Former Yugoslavia. The firm is currently acting for a major multinational corporation in the largest current global corruption investigation.

Criminal antitrust (cartels): since the criminalisation of cartel offences in the UK, the firm has acted for over 40 individuals in every criminal cartel investigation in the UK. In May 2010 Michael O’Kane, head of the business crime team, represented two senior British Airways executives who were acquitted of involvement in the BA/Virgin criminal cartel. Michael has also written The Law of Criminal Cartels Practice and Procedure (Oxford University Press), published in September 2009, which is the first work to focus exclusively on the UK cartel offence from the practitioner’s perspective

Extradition and international mutual legal assistance: this is a major practice area for Peters & Peters, pioneered by a team which includes partner Anand Doobay, author of the leading practitioner text Jones and Doobay on Extradition and Mutual Assistance (Sweet & Maxwell) and appointed to the Government Extradition Review Panel in October 2010, and Michael O’Kane, head of the business crime team who has contributed to academic texts on extradition and has led many high-profile international extradition cases.

Other areas of expertise: HMRC inquiries and investigations, financial regulation/data protection/freedom of information/corporate governance/professional disciplinary, compliance, regulatory and corporate governance matters, including anti-money laundering compliance, policy-making and crisis management.

Breakdown of work %
Commercial litigation/civil fraud 36
Business crime 64

Number of UK partners 9
Number of other UK fee-earners 42