Richard Addlestone

Solomon Harris is a full service corporate/commercial law firm specialising in international offshore work with recognised expertise in a number of niche areas, including mergers and acquisitions, investment funds, captive insurance, and corporate restructuring/insolvency. The firm comprises 8 partners, 19 fee earners in total and a staff of 30 and since its formation in 1998 has developed a reputation as one of Cayman's top tier firms for providing effective offshore legal solutions, both promptly and efficiently. The firm continues to be recognised as a top ranking Cayman firm by the leading UK international law firm directories, such as Chambers Global and Legal 500 with a complement of very experienced lawyers across all work groups.

The firm’s reputation has been built on its consistent responsiveness to client needs and its straightforward, commercially focused advice. The firm's clients include major financial institutions, public and private companies, high net worth individuals, major onshore law firms and accounting firms, including a number of well-recognised names such as Société Générale, Unibanco, Banco Itau, Harcourt and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The firm’s M&A practice falls under the Corporate Group comprising 11 attorneys.  The latest edition of Legal 500 acknowledges that “Solomon Harris’ recent dominant feature has been M&A” and it is certainly the case that over the past year the firm has been involved in some of the most high profile deals in the Cayman Islands.  Examples include acting for SigmaTron International (listed on NASDAQ) on its acquisition of a business from Spitfire Control Inc, acting on the merger of healthcare captive insurers operated by McLaren Insurance Company (owned by the Michigan based health care system) and Petoskey Assurance Ltd and acting for the purchasers of a majority stake in WestStar T.V. Limited (the Cayman provider of digital cable television and broadband services.  The firm’s significant presence in this area was recently recognised by Chambers Global:“The team at Solomon Harris maintains its strong position in the market thanks to its in depth experience handling a vast array of corporate and commercial matters.”

The M&A practice and the Corporate Group as a whole was significantly strengthened this year by the lateral hire of partner, Richard Addlestone.

Richard Addlestone has 22 years experience as an attorney specialising in M&A. He joined the firm in 2013 and has been an attorney in the Cayman Islands since 2001. Richard has undertaken a wide range of offshore corporate/commercial work but has focused in particular on M&A, hedge funds and private equity as well as banking and finance, energy and captive insurance and reinsurance.

He is an honours graduate in law from Manchester University, England and qualified as a solicitor in England in 1993. On qualification, he joined Paisner & Co (now Berwin Leighton Paisner). He went on to work at LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae and then Denton Wilde Sapte (now Dentons) in London.

During his 10 years in London, Richard undertook a wide range of corporate and commercial work which included leading a large number of cross border and UK domestic mergers and acquisitions, share sales, business transfers, and joint ventures. Representative transactions include advising a US utility company listed on the New York Stock Exchange on a series of cross border acquisitions of companies and businesses based largely in Europe, advising a UK electricity company in a bid to acquire another UK electricity company, advising a London Stock Exchange listed client on the spin-off of one of its business divisions; advising a London Stock Exchange listed client on the sale of one of its business divisions and subsequent listing on the London Stock Exchange, advising a London Stock Exchange listed client on a management buy-out and advising management on a management buy in.

During his 12 years in the Cayman Islands, Richard was a partner in the Walkers corporate department from 2001 until 2010 and then a partner in Appleby’s corporate department 2010 to 2013 where he advised on cross border mergers and acquisitions for clients active in various areas including oil and gas, captive insurance and investment funds. In particular, Richard advised Credit Suisse on the Cayman Islands aspects of its acquisition of ABN Amro’s investment fund administration business.