Ranked by Who’s Who Legal as a Global Elite Thought Leader for Asset Recovery and by Chambers & Partners as amongst the top 20 global practitioners for Asset Tracing and Recovery and as a Next Generation Partner in Civil Fraud and Commercial Litigation by The Legal 500, Natalie is a partner specialising in complex multi-jurisdictional commercial litigation including banking and financial services litigation, insolvency, fraud and asset recovery.  She is a “partner who is one to watch”, “personable, professional and user friendly, great to work with, always on top of the detail.

Natalie has expertise in litigation and arbitration involving banking and financial services, insolvency, trust, contractual, partnership, shareholder and commercial disputes.  She has a particular specialism in fraud and asset recovery and has acted on some high profile Russian and CIS cases.  She has worked on multi-jurisdictional asset tracing cases, including obtaining extensive Worldwide Freezing, Search, Disclosure and Passport Surrender Orders in one of Russia’s biggest ever alleged bank frauds.

Natalie is on the list of Supervising Solicitors and has hands on experience of working on highly contested search orders involving multiple parties.  She recently assisted the Civil Procedure Rules Committee with the drafting of the new precedent Imaging Order.

Natalie typically advises on cases involving fraud, breach of trust, deceit, misrepresentation and conspiracy.  She has acted for a wide range of international clients ranging from insolvency practitioners, a pension provider subject to a pensions’ liberation fraud, creditors of a ponzi scheme, minority shareholders in a large high street brand, an investment bank, a commodities trading entity, to state appointed liquidators of banks in significant claims to recover proceeds of fraud.  Cases often have an international element and involve interim relief applications, jurisdiction challenges, enforcement of awards/orders and asset tracing.

Background

Natalie qualified as a lawyer in England and Wales in 2005 having obtained an LLB Law with German Law Hons from King’s College London and her LPC (distinction) from the College of Law.  She trained and qualified at SJ Berwin LLP.  She has worked in the litigation teams at Lawrence Graham LLP, Signature Litigation LLP and Taylor Wessing LLP.  She joined civil fraud boutique PCB Litigation LLP (which subsequently became PCB Byrne) and was made up to partner in 2019.  Natalie joined Cooke, Young and Keidan LLP in April 2022.

What the legal directories say

The Legal 500 (2022) edition recognises Natalie as a Next Generation Partner in Civil Fraud and Commercial Litigation and recommends her for Banking Litigation.

The Legal 500 describes Natalie as “a hard working, knowledgeable and client oriented practitioner”, “personable, professional and user friendly”, “great to work with, always on top of the detail” and as “a junior partner who is one to watch. Great management of the case team and extremely good at telling the client how it is”.  She is known for [her] strategic thinking and [is] client-oriented” and hasexcellent control of her cases and is an excellent leader”.

In The Legal 500 2020 edition, Natalie is identified as a key lawyer for civil fraud and in the 2021 edition, she is also identified as a key lawyer for Commercial Litigation and Banking Litigation and is described as “creative in approach [with] excellent client communication”.

Professional groups

Natalie is Honorary Secretary of the London Solicitors Litigation Association and is on the Founding Committee for next generation practitioners for Thought Leaders4 Disputes and the IWIRC European Networks Steering Committee.

Her professional memberships include the Law Society of England and Wales, Commercial Fraud Lawyers Association, Thought Leaders4 FIRE and RAIIDAR International (Recovering Assets, Insolvency, Investigations, Disputes and Restructuring).

Publications, articles and seminars

Natalie is a member of Lexis PSL’s Case Analysis Expert Panel on Dispute Resolution and regularly writes case summaries for that publication.  She is co-editor of the England and Wales chapter of “Enforcement of Foreign Judgments”.  She is actively involved in responding to legal consultations for the LSLA.

She has had numerous speaking engagements including the annual ABA/RAA Conference on the resolution of CIS-related disputes, The Law Society’s English Law Week in Russia and on numerous Thought Leaders4 webinars.


Cases of Note

  • Acting for an insolvent Russian bank relating to a £1.34bn worldwide freezing order and search order in one of Russia’s largest ever alleged frauds (Vneshprombank v Bedzhamov)

  • Advising a commodities trading company in a €225m fraud claim involving multiple arbitration and litigation claims

  • Acting in a c. $350m dispute between Russian oligarchs about the ownership of a substantial fishing enterprise (Tugushev v Orlov and others)

  • Acting for CIS state banks in liquidation seeking to recover assets from fraudulent acts of its former management

  • Acting for a Trustee in Bankruptcy in the largest fraudulent investment (Ponzi) scheme to hit Jamaica which involved obtaining a worldwide freezing order in Jamaica and a freezing order and Norwich Pharmacal order in the DIFC

  • Acting for one of the first Eastern European oligarchs in a dispute involving bribery and corruption of foreign public officials

  • Acting on one of The Lawyer top 20 cases of 2014 involving the Blue Skye Investment Group, which was facing allegations of inter alia fraud, conspiracy and unlawful interference

  • Acting for an international telecoms group lifting a mandatory injunction and at the same hearing, obtaining a freezing injunction and subsequently obtaining a reciprocal injunction in Cyprus

  • Acting for a pension provider subject to a pensions liberation fraud

  • Acting for a joint venture party in an acrimonious split from another joint venture party in five joint venture projects in the care home business including claims for specific performance and the successful defence of a derivative claim

  • Acting for an investment bank pursuing claims for over $100m against African mining entities