Matthew is a highly skilled commercial litigation attorney with a focus on insolvency, restructuring, and debt recovery.
Experience
Matthew has substantial experience in all aspects of insolvency, restructuring, financial services and general commercial litigation practice, including complex contractual disputes, shareholder disputes, trusts and trust management, urgent and interlocutory injunctions, winding up and bankruptcy petitions, restructuring and schemes of arrangement, asset recovery, secured and unsecured debt recovery and security enforcement.
Matthew practiced in Australia for more than five years before moving to the Cayman Islands in 2023. Previously a Senior Associate in the Insolvency and Litigation team of Thomson Geer Lawyers, Matthew was the only solicitor within Thomson Geer engaged directly by upper management to recover debts owed to the Firm on a national basis, successfully recovering hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to the Firm, slashing the Firm's Bad Debts liability.
He joined Collas Crill in October 2024.
Background
In 2017 Matthew completed a Bachelor of Laws and Legal Practice (with Distinction), a Bachelor of Business (Business Economics) and Bachelor of Letters (Italian) at The Flinders University of South Australia.
Matthew worked as a summer Clerk at Kain Lawyers, a boutique corporate and commercial law firm based in Adelaide, South Australia, before moving to Thomson Geer.
After graduating, Matthew remained engaged with The Flinders University of South Australia as an industry mentor, providing direct one-on-one or small-group mentorship to law students, as well as speaking on various educational and industry panels hosted by the University.
"I pride myself on being highly organised with an acute attention to detail, as well as being outcome driven and focused on the quality of my work."
Expertise
We live in an increasingly contentious world. When your business is involved in any kind of legal dispute it's crucial to work with lawyers who are hands-on, cost-effective and flexible enough to respond quickly and intuitively to your unique situation and needs.
Our multi-jurisdictional team brings a wealth of experience from a range of diverse backgrounds to give quick, accurate, commercial advice. We work across dispute resolution, restructuring, recovery and insolvency matters to ensure that clients get the full benefit of our know-how and experience across the world.
When customers or clients do not pay on time, we provide timely and effective advice on recovering debts and enforcing judgments. We help businesses, service providers, lenders and borrowers – including banks, funds, directors, and insolvency practitioners – recover commercial debt swiftly and strategically.
Our services cover court proceedings, arrets, saisies, statutory demands, insolvency proceedings, désastre, realisation, dégrèvement, and enforcement of security interests. We conduct thorough security reviews and advise on pre-emptive measures, ensuring prompt, decisive action with discretion to minimise reputational risk.
We are used to working as part of a multi-jurisdictional team, capable of reacting and responding quickly to urgent requests for assistance with locating and freezing assets.
As sophisticated defendants become more adept at dissipating assets, we've been involved in cases that created new law in the Channel Islands in relation to a party's ability to trace assets and recover their losses. With their ability to deal with complex issues, the team deliver clear, commercial advice on the availability and likely success of recovery methods.
With specialists across not only Guernsey and Jersey but also in the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands, services provided by our fraud and asset tracing lawyers include:
Immediate applications for freezing and search orders
Expedited Norwich Pharmacal order and disclosure proceedings
Asset-tracing across trust structures and corporate vehicles
Coordination with criminal and regulatory investigations where overlap exists.
Our international footprint lets us deliver prompt, all‑round legal support precisely when clients need it most.
We provide expert legal support on both local and cross border amalgamations of regulated and unregulated companies and work closely with our dispute resolution team on local schemes of arrangement.
Our dispute resolution specialists collaborate seamlessly with our corporate advisory and banking teams across jurisdictions to advise multinational corporations, trust companies, banks, funds, insurers, governments and directors.
We provide a global perspective, working closely with our clients to ensure that they are best placed to respond to customer issues, fraud risks, rapidly changing market conditions and regulatory demands.
Thanks to the depth of our experience and the resources of our team, we've acted on some of the largest pieces of litigation brought against directors offshore.
We're well placed to deal with the 'bet the farm' proceedings that can occur in these type of disputes and have represented parties involved in intra-company disputes, including executive, non-executive and independent directors, majority and minority shareholders, companies and liquidators. We understand that shareholder disputes are often not black and white and our team finds innovative and commercial alternatives to those which the Court may offer – taking a collaborative approach with our clients to ensure that the right result is achieved.
Regulation and legal risk management are placing increasing burdens on companies and businesses in terms of time, costs and resources, and the consequences of getting this wrong can be severe.
We can assist with all regulatory and compliance issues in Jersey, Guernsey, BVI and Cayman including:
anti-money laundering and proceeds of crime legislation
FATCA and CRS reporting
licensing
economic substance
beneficial ownership
sanctions
tax information exchange requests
AIFMD
Additionally we can help with regulator investigations and visits, enforcement and remediation including representation before regulators, tribunals committees and courts. We have an excellent record in defending corporates and their directors and officers in regulatory proceedings.
Please view our Regulatory page for more information.
In regulatory disputes there are often fine lines between the usual wrangling with the regulator and something more serious – by matching our mix of experienced contentious and non-contentious lawyers to the particular problem at hand, we achieve better and more efficient outcomes.
As regulatory experts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Jersey we frequently act on contentious matters and can leverage our experience to help clients achieve the highest regulatory standards and avoid common pitfalls.
We combine pragmatic risk assessment with rigorous legal advice and compliance guidance to reduce exposure and protect reputation, while drawing on our cross-jurisdictional knowledge to design remediation strategies, negotiate with regulators and, where necessary, litigate effectively.
Our collaborative approach ensures clients receive clear, actionable legal advice that balances regulatory obligations with commercial realities, delivers timely, proportionate solutions and supports remediation plans, helping prevent escalation into more serious enforcement action and preserve business continuity.
Our merger appraisal team has developed a strong reputation as the trusted partner for high value, complex merger appraisals. We have acted for dissenting shareholders in the leading appraisal cases in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda.
Clients benefit from the wealth of experience of our integrated practice. The breadth and depth of our multi-jurisdictional team allows us to respond decisively to fast paced and complex merger appraisal litigation and gives our clients unparalleled access to legal developments across the jurisdictions. Our litigation and trial experience is marker-leading. Our team has a depth of experience in complex trial preparation, interlocutory hearings and strategic case management. We have extensive experience working with world-renowned, independent experts and have built strong relationships with 'best-in-class' leading counsel in the appraisal space.
