Images are still loading please cancel your preview and try again shortly.
Accessibility tools
Skip to main content
Linklaters

Commercial and Private Trusts

Our dedicated team develops innovative and flexible solutions across a wide range of sectors and clients, advising on all aspects of trust structuring and taxation, and working with charities large and small.
Explore

Trusts

Our highly-experienced team advises corporates, funds, financial institutions, select family offices, trustees and charities in a wide variety of contexts, both commercial and private.

We work effectively with our clients to provide a seamless structuring, implementation and advisory service by taking a coordinated cross-practice, cross-jurisdictional approach. What makes our trusts offering unique is the depth and breadth of our experience in creating bespoke, trust-based solutions across M&A, capital markets, financial services and real estate transactions, in addition to our charities and private wealth expertise.

Client services

Structuring and solutions

We frequently advise on the establishment of trust structures, and how such structures can best be utilised to achieve our clients' goals. Drawing on our depth of experience in both the commercial and private trust spaces, we are uniquely placed to advise a broad spectrum of clients on bespoke structuring that is tailored to their needs.

Trust advisory

Good governance is essential for effective trust administration. We provide tailored advice that is practical and user-friendly to trustees, settlors, beneficiaries and protectors of new and existing trusts, drawing on our wealth of experience of complex commercial and private trust matters to guide them through any challenges they face. We also advise professional trust service providers and financial institutions on legal and governance matters concerning their trust businesses, and work closely with our colleagues in our Corporate, Employee Incentives, Real Estate and Financial Regulation teams in the UK and around the globe to provide clients with a full service.

Taxation

The taxation of trusts and similar structures is a complex and highly specialised area. We work closely with our corporate tax colleagues in the UK and around the globe to provide comprehensive and holistic advice on our clients’ structures that is tailored to their needs. We also advise funds, financial institutions and corporates on the tax treatment of their individual and trustee investors.

Regulation and reporting

Against an increasingly complex global tax, transparency and regulatory background, our clients rely on us to offer clear, commercially-minded advice. Through our international offices and the long-standing relationships we have in jurisdictions around the world, we help trustees and corporate groups navigate regulation and registration globally.

Charities

We frequently provide establishment and governance advice to charities in all legal forms, and in a variety of contexts. We are proud of the significant contribution that the team makes to the firm's wider pro bono initiatives in this area, establishing and assisting the work of charities working both locally and worldwide to further a wide variety of causes, and supporting their trustees across a range of issues.
Our experience
  • Advising Unilever in the context of the historic simplification of its dual-listed structure and the €4.5bn disposal of its global tea business to CVC
  • Advising insolvency practitioners from PricewaterhouseCoopers as administrators of Lehman Brothers on aspects of the global insolvency
  • Advising OHL, the global infrastructure group, in respect of its market-leading and complex cross-border restructuring and scheme of arrangement
  • Advising Lloyds Banking Group and RBS on the implementation of the UK’s bank ringfencing regime as it concerned their trust business
  • Advising Investec in the context of the demerger and listing of its asset management business, Ninety One
  • Advising Mondi Group in respect of the simplification of its existing structure from a dual listed company structure to a single holding company structure under Mondi plc
  • Advising a consortium of financial institutions and Clearmatics in respect of the development of the Utility Settlement Coin (USC), an asset-backed digital cash instrument on blockchain for use within global institutional financial markets
  • Assisting a range of sponsors including I Squared Capital, TDR Capital, Carlyle, HgCapital and Brookfield
  • Advising various clients on the establishment and unwind of trusts for financing structures including securitisations, repackagings and loan financings
  • Advising large grant-making charities including The Hadley Trust
  • Advising on and implementing changes to the governance of a charitable foundation established by one of our major banking clients
  • Providing structuring advice and achieving registration of a ground-breaking charity which provides access to mental health treatments and support for refugees and other displaced people globally
  • Advising on the creation and registration of a UK funding charity for a British international school
  • Establishing private trust company structures and advising on their ongoing administration

Key contacts

x Find a Lawyer