Gatehouse Chambers

Art, Media and Sport, Banking and Financial Services, Civil Fraud, Commercial Dispute Resolution, Companies, Joint Ventures & Partnerships, Construction & Engineering, Injunctions, Insolvency, Professional Negligence

Tom is a commercial barrister who specialises in three areas: civil fraud; company and insolvency disputes; and construction disputes. He also has a growing practice involving art and cultural property disputes.

Tom is experienced at working as part of a large team in large and complex litigation where he prides himself on having a close day-to-day working relationship with solicitor teams. Tom’s experience has included the following:

Borelli & ors v Otaibi & ors: Led by Nigel Jones KC, Sarah McCann KC, Emily Betts and James Shaw in acting for the main Defendant group in a USD100million+ fraud claim involving over 50 parties, brought by the liquidators of four funds against a private banking group (comprising investment managers, investment advisors, directors, employees and other parties), related to the funds’ investments across the course of 7 years including in aviation finance, real property, art, and Reading Football Club. It is currently listed for a 12-week trial in the Commercial Court in 2027. Tom’s work has included the following:

• [2025] EWHC 2949 (Comm): Tom appeared at the first CMC of the claim unled against two silks, where the Judge described his submissions as “made very attractively” (at [9]).

• [2025] EWHC 3263 (Comm): Led by Nigel Jones KC in an application to amend a Part 20 claim to pass on the fraud allegations to the funds’ majority owner.

• Day-to-day close involvement with the solicitor team in their conduct of a disclosure exercise involving 12 million documents, including appearing unled at two disclosure guidance hearings (one on the progress of disclosure and one on search terms) and led by Emily Betts in a successful application to extend time for disclosure by 7 months.

SKAT v Solo Capital Partners LLP [2025] EWHC 2364 (Comm). Led by Nigel Jones KC, Sarah McCann, Lisa Freeman, Emily Betts, Miguel Henderson and Alice Whyte as part of the trial counsel team acting for the main Defendant group in a £1.4 billion fraud claim brought by the Kingdom of Denmark against a hedge fund and a large number of individuals associated with it arising from their trading of Danish securities, which was tried over the course of a year from April 2024 to April 2025. It is believed to be the longest trial in the history of the Commercial Court and was described by Foxton J as “one of the largest pieces of litigation, perhaps the largest, ever to be commenced in the Commercial Court”. Tom’s team was successful in defeating all claims brought against their clients.

Prior to pupillage, Tom worked for a Legal Tech company where he taught a machine learning programme to recognise different types of contractual terms. The programme is used by M&A lawyers at leading firms to undertake due diligence more quickly and more accurately.

Tom studied Law at St Anne’s College, Oxford, where he was elected JCR President and won a college prize for his performance in finals. He was awarded an advocacy scholarship and graded Outstanding on the Bar course, for which he won a Buchanan prize from Lincoln’s Inn.

Call: 2021

Tom studied Law at St Anne’s College, Oxford, where he was elected JCR President and won a college prize for his performance in finals. He was awarded an advocacy scholarship and graded Outstanding on the Bar course.

In his spare time, Tom enjoys playing, watching and talking about cricket.