Advisory Board
John Bender TEP
Chairman of the Advisory Board
John Bender joined the board of Bender Brothers & Co in 2008 and has been managing director of its fiduciary office since 2012. As a trust and estate practitioner specialising in private client wealth planning, he has longstanding experience as trust protector and investment committee chairman. Mr Bender leads a board of eminent jurists as director-general of the International Trust Arbitration Organisation and has set up a number of litigation teams for substantial cross-border dynastic and fiduciary disputes. Between 1988 and 2001, he specialised in Asian equity markets at Morgan Stanley, Barings and HSBC with the benefit of having spent much of his childhood in Hong Kong.
Mr. Bender is chairman of CANZUK International, an organisation advocating closer ties amongst the Commonwealth realms. He was special adviser to The Prince of Wales's charities office between 2004 and 2014 and councillor of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea between 1990 and 1994. Mr. Bender is treasurer of a geopolitical discussion group and supports the St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem as a member of the Most Venerable Order of St. John.
Having been educated at Eton and Harvard, Mr. Bender obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Law in 2003 and the STEP Diploma in International Trust Management in 2011. He is a member of the British Virgin Islands Arbitration Group and a qualified holder of the UK Society of Investment Professionals Investment Management Certificate. He speaks French, German, Spanish and Swedish.
Stephen Arthur TEP LLB CTA,
Stephen Arthur qualified as a solicitor in England in 1974,and as a member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation in 1975. From 1980 until 1998 he was lead tax partner (domestic and international) with major London law firms, specialising in offshore trusts and structures and tax enquiry/audit cases. From 1997 until the end of 2005 he was chairman of the European Branch of the Chartered Institute of Taxation. He is an accredited mediator.
From 1998 until 2002 he worked in Geneva as managing director of the Swiss trust company of a major international bank group. He was called to the Bar as a barrister in the UK in 2002. His practice focuses on taxation in the context of cross-border -wealth management, and the effective use of trusts and similar structures for long-term family wealth preservation. He has been advising a substantial proportion of his clients for more than 30 years – not least because of his mediation skills and knowledge of offshore structures both in practice and from a rigorous academic background. Acting as an independent adviser to families over long periods has given him many insights into the ways in which ‘the next generation’ can become accustomed to dealing positively with institutional and private wealth management service providers.
Mr. Arthur is a well-known author on technical tax matters. In addition to contributing to standard taxation reference books, he has contributed numerous articles to Tax Planning International, Tax Planning International Review, Tax Adviser, Taxation and other journals. For 10 years until 2014 he was a tutor for the STEP International Trust Diploma qualification, and until stepping down in 2018 was one of the joint editors of The STEP Journal. Stephen speaks French and Italian, and has some understanding of Spanish and German.
Henry Brandts-Giesen TEP
Henry Brandts-Giesen heads Dentons Private Wealth team in New Zealand. He advises leading high net worth families, entrepreneurs and sportsmen on trust and estate planning across a range of jurisdictions. Specific areas of expertise would include wealth planning, family office governance, family business succession, trust law, fiduciary risk management, family/private wealth/relationship property related dispute resolution, residency by investment, cross-border wealth structuring, transitional residency tax planning, private funds, strategic philanthropy, captive insurance, global tax reporting and compliance, and financial regulation relating to private wealth.
There is also a contentious element to his practice. Mr. Brandts-Giesen has represented clients in a number of reported fiduciary litigation judgments. He has been consistently ranked by Chambers & Partners Legal Directory in the Band 1 category (Individual and Team) and qualified as a solicitor in New Zealand (2002), The Cook Islands (2004), England & Wales (2008) and the British Virgin islands (2015).
The Hon Russell Brown LLD
The Hon Russell Brown, LLD, is an arbitrator and mediator. His areas of specialisation for arbitrations and mediations include commercial law, construction, energy, government liability, insurance, mergers/acquisitions/joint ventures, tax and technology.
He is a distinguished jurist, having served for over ten years on Canada’s federal judiciary, including eight years on the Supreme Court of Canada, writing significant judgments in commercial and private law (both common law and civil law), constitutional law, administrative law, aboriginal law, oil and gas, criminal law, tax law, technology and class actions. technology, tax law, constitutional law, criminal law and class actions. He was also litigation and arbitration counsel, formerly at the Bars of British Columbia and Alberta, handling a wide range of commercial, insurance, construction, estates and other issues, and was Professor and Associate Dean of Law at the University of Alberta and Chair of the Health Law Institute.
Mr. Brown presently serves as an arbitrator and mediator in complex commercial matters. He is also the author of a treatise on negligence claims for economic loss, co-author of a textbook on government liability, and author or co-author of over 40 published law review articles and book chapters on private law, regulatory takings and civil justice. He regularly contributes to academic and professional conference proceedings and judicial education conferences. His scholarship and judgments have been cited by Commonwealth high courts, and he has given invited presentations to lawyers, judges, legal academics, legislators and policymakers across Canada, the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Israel. Mr Brown conducts domestic and international arbitrations both in English and in French.
Georg Liechtenstein MALD
Georg Liechtenstein qualified as a Liechtenstein lawyer in 2007 and worked at LGT Bank headquarters between 2008 and 2010. In 2010 he moved to Eastern Europe to set up a money service business for the Europe – MENA remittance corridor with a focus on the Kurdish diaspora. Mr. Liechtenstein joined the development team of an encrypted email and data storage service in 2014. In 2018 he completed the Tenity accelerator program in Zurich and co-founded a business in the Swiss insurance sector.
Having grown up in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, he studied law at the University of Vienna. Upon graduation, he embarked upon postgraduate studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where he finished with a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD). Mr. Liechtenstein also completed level I and II of the CFA program.
Dancie Penn OBE KC
Dancia Penn, OBE, KC is an arbitrator and mediator, and a practising lawyer based in the British Virgin Islands. She has the unique distinction of having served at the highest levels of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government as BVI Deputy Governor, Deputy Premier, Attorney General and Minister of Health as well as a Judge of the Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal.
In 1996, Dancia became King’s Counsel and now is the senior KC in BVI. Her extensive legal experience, in the Caribbean and beyond, encompasses contentious and non-contentious corporate, commercial and regulatory matters including in financial services, insolvency and shareholder disputes, and a wide range of other areas of private law including trusts and estates, as well as public law matters.
With an extensive international client-base, Dancia regularly advises and assists clients in BVI, in the Caribbean, United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Latin America and Asia on matters involving BVI law. She appears in the BVI High Court and the Commercial Court in major commercial and other disputes. Dancia has appeared in the Courts at all levels including Her Majesty’s Privy Council (the highest appellate court from BVI).
Dancia is an arbitrator and mediator with 33 Bedford Row Chambers, London and Arbitration Place in Canada. She is also a member of the Panel of Arbitrators of the BVI International Arbitration Centre.