Brick Court Chambers

Thomas Plewman is a senior commercial silk in England (as well as South Africa). He is first and foremost a trial advocate, with a heavy commercial practice across a wide front, including leading cases in commercial fraud, financial services and auditors’ professional negligence. He has acted in Lawyer’s top 20 cases of the year for each of 2025 (NMC v Ernst & Young), 2023 (PJSC Bank v Kolomoisky), 2017 (Holyoake v Candy ), 2015 (Cattles Group v PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP), 2013 (Deutsche Bank AG v Sebastian Holdings Inc) and 2011 (British Sky Broadcasting Limited v Office of Communications).

Thomas has for 30 years acted in audit negligence cases, and won Legal 500’s Professional Negligence Silk of the year award for 2025. He acted in 2025 for Ernst & Young in defence of the multi-billion dollar claims arising out of the collapse of NMC plc, as the lead counsel on the audit issues; and is leading the defence for Deloitte in Hong of the claims by the Pacific Andes Group. Current and recent finance and fraud cases include the Ukrainian Bank fraud claims in PJSC Privatbank v Kolomoisky; the internet hacking claims in Azima v RAKIA, Dechert and others; and the Ugandan Bank fraud claims in Crane Bank Limited v DFCU Bank Limited and others. He has recently and is acting in a number or ongoing insurance and commercial arbitrations.

B  Com  (UCT,  cum  laude);  LLB  (Wits,  cum  laude);  BCL  (Oxon).  Graduated  as  top  LLB  student  in  his  year  and was  awarded  a  Rhodes  Scholarship  for  South  Africa  in  1990.