Natasha is a highly
experienced litigator and courtroom advocate whose practice combines complex civil
and commercial litigation with criminal defence work. She has particular
expertise in contentious trusts, serious fraud, money laundering, employment
and regulatory matters and regularly appears before the Guernsey courts.
Natasha acts for beneficiaries
and other interested parties in substantial claims against trustees and
professional fiduciaries, including claims founded on gross negligence, breach
of trust and breach of fiduciary duty. Her experience includes failures of
supervision, investment mismanagement and cases involving significant loss or
cross-border tax and regulatory consequences. She is well placed to investigate
trustees’ decision-making, internal governance, communications and
record-keeping, identify the cause and extent of any resulting loss, and advise
on appropriate remedies. Her broader trusts practice includes Public Trustee
v Cooper applications, Beddoes relief, hostile beneficiary disputes and
litigation involving multi-jurisdictional trust, investment and corporate
structures.
As a former director of
a leading global multi-family office, Natasha advised wealthy families and
wealth creators on offshore trusts, intergenerational wealth, governance and
succession structures. She also served on the boards of corporate trustees and
corporate directors and worked closely with accounting, banking and investment
teams. Her senior in-house experience gives Natasha first-hand insight into how
professional trustees govern, administer and oversee complex structures.
Combined with her contentious trusts expertise, it enables her to identify
failures in governance, decision-making, supervision, disclosure and investment
oversight, and to pursue trustee-liability claims with forensic focus and
commercial realism.
Natasha acted for the
liquidators of Carlyle Capital Corporation in proceedings arising from the
collapse of the Guernsey fund. The claims concerned alleged breaches by
directors of fiduciary, statutory and common-law duties, including the duty to
exercise reasonable skill and care and wrongful trading. The value of the
claim, including interest, approached US$2 billion by the conclusion of the
six-month trial. Natasha was involved at trial and in the subsequent Court of
Appeal and Privy Council proceedings.
Natasha’s experience
encompasses regulatory matters, including suspected breaches, GFSC
notifications and visits, and investigation and enforcement proceedings. She
has conducted numerous investigations on behalf of financial institutions. At
the London Bar, she was instructed by and spent significant periods working
in-house with the Financial Services Authority, now the Financial Conduct
Authority.
Natasha advises on employment
law including senior exits, discrimination claims, workplace investigations,
regulatory fitness and propriety, and employment related personal injury
claims. She acted for the successful applicant in Hitchins v Babbe,
Guernsey’s first equal-pay case, in which her client received the maximum
compensation available under the Sex Discrimination Ordinance.
Criminal advocacy is an
important and rewarding part of Natasha’s practice. She has appeared before the
Magistrates and Royal Court of Guernsey in serious and sensitive cases
involving sexual offences, violence, drug importation and fraud by abuse of
position. She particularly values the demands of trial advocacy and brings to
criminal proceedings the same forensic analysis, strategic judgment and
attention to evidence that characterise her civil and commercial practice. Across
her civil and criminal practice, Natasha is accustomed to cases involving
extensive documentary evidence, complex financial material, expert evidence and
difficult questions of credibility.
Natasha has repeatedly been
recognised as a “rising star” and “leading junior” in the legal directories.
The Legal 500 has described her as:
“Natasha Newell is
an accomplished and fearless litigator. She quickly cuts to the core of an
issue and is exactly who you want fighting in your corner.”
Called to the English
Bar in 2001 and the Guernsey Bar in 2018, Natasha practised for over a decade
as a barrister from Henderson Chambers in London, where she remains a door
tenant. She has also worked in the Guernsey litigation teams of two of the world’s
leading offshore law firms. She is a partner at Number 10 Advocates.
Earlier in her career, Natasha
worked as a competition lawyer in Brussels and as a Judicial Assistant to the
Lord and Lady Justices of Appeal in London. She holds a First Class LLB from
the University of Essex, an LLM from the College of Europe in Bruges and a
postgraduate diploma in Human Rights from the University of Robert Schuman in
Strasbourg. Natasha obtained distinctions in both the STEP Advanced Certificate
in Trust Disputes and the STEP Advanced Certificate in UK Tax for International
Clients. She has previously been shortlisted for a Finance Monthly Law
Award in the category of Contentious Trusts and Probate Specialist. She is a
member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, the Association of
Contentious Trust and Probate Specialists, the Chancery Bar Association and the
Employment Lawyers Association.
Natasha was an editor
of the Jersey and Guernsey Law Review between 2014 and 2020. She is the
former Chair of the Guernsey Housing Appeals Tribunal (and is currently a
Tribunal member), the Population and Employment Advisory Panel and was a
director of Guernsey Bereavement Service for five years until 2025. Natasha
also served for many years as Vice-Chair of the Guernsey Equality Working Group,
which campaigned for and was instrumental to the introduction of the
anti-discrimination Ordinance in Guernsey.
Natasha speaks French,
Spanish, Hindi and Punjabi.
