Nicholas Brookes

Nick is BVI office head of Dispute Resolution. He is a barrister with more than a decade's experience in dispute resolution and BVI litigation, in particular in director and shareholder disputes, trust and estates litigation, insolvency, fraud and asset tracing, and general corporate and commercial disputes. He formerly worked as a commercial and chancery barrister in London.

Background and experience

Nick has worked on and appeared in some of the largest high profile and high value litigation in the BVI with Ogier since 2014.

He has extensive trial experience in the Commercial Court, such as Mark Byers & another v Chen Ningning (part of the Pioneer Freight Futures international litigation), Play La Inc. v NFC Data Inc, and King Bun Limited & others v Lau Man Sang, James & others. He appears regularly in the Court of Appeal, both as sole and lead counsel. He also has significant Privy Council experience.

He has substantial experience of the procedure of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court throughout all of its tiers, having co-authored a collated version of the ECSC CPR, used by the Commercial Court, High Court and Court of Appeal in the Eastern Caribbean, as well as other BVI practitioners and London counsel. He has sat on the BVI's Civil Procedure Rules committee on behalf of the BVI Bar Association. He has particular procedural expertise in relief in support of foreign proceedings, foreign enforcement, and costs principles germane to the BVI.

Nick has a specialism in trust and contentious private wealth work, with a deep understanding of the international holding structures in trusts and estate law and their implications for litigation in the BVI. He notably ran the BVI aspect of Gany Holdings (PTC) SA v Khan and others [2018] UKPC 21, including successfully both in the Court of Appeal and Privy Council stages. He has also appeared in BVI aspect of the Scherbakov Estate case (Claim no. BVIHC (COM) 2018/134) and ran the Al Thani dispute (BVIHCVAP2021/0001) successfully at first instance and in the Court of Appeal, as well as working with a large number of other ultra HNW individuals and families. Additionally, Nick has extensive experience advising on international information exchange in tax and other financial international investigatory matters.

He also has significant experience of contentious insolvency and restructuring matters. This insolvency work invariably has a cross-border dimension and regularly involves urgent relief, working on some of the earliest provisional liquidations to occur in the BVI in the China Fisheries litigation.

Nick regularly advises on and appears as counsel in an array of interim matters, including applications for receiverships and injunctive relief, Norwich Pharmacal relief, cross-border and conflicts of laws related applications, and other general interlocutory work.

He was a member of the BVI Bar Association Council for more than four years and more than three of which as First Vice President, having previously acted as Treasurer. He established a Bench and Bar advocacy program with a former Commercial Court judge and has assisted in the Bar Association's pro bono clinic in the BVI, and set up a practitioner seminar program for Bar members between 2020 and 2021.

He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2011 and began his legal career training in the pro bono sector in London. He took pupillage in a leading commercial set in London and moved into general commercial and chancery work. He was twice a Lord Diplock scholar of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 2009 and 2010, while undertaking the legal diploma and Bar exams in London. He holds an MA from Cambridge University where he took a first and was a scholar of his college. Before entering the law Nick's background was in public relations.

Admitted in:
2011 - England and Wales (non practising)
2014 - British Virgin Islands

Memberships:
RISA (BVI chapter of INSOL)
Honourable Society of the Middle Temple
BVI Bar Association
Chancery Bar Association Overseas Member