Basil P Zirinis

Practice Areas

Basil Zirinis is a partner of the Sullivan and Cromwell’s Estates and Personal Group, leading the international private client practice from London and New York. He represents individuals, fiduciaries and family-controlled businesses throughout the world in a broad range of matters, including domestic and international estate and trust planning and litigation, and family business governance and transition. He speaks regularly at international conferences regarding U.S. and international tax and estate planning.

He has extensive experience in trust and estate litigation and has been involved in many of the leading litigations in this area in the last 25 years in the United States and abroad. Recently, for example, Mr. Zirinis and S&C have been counsel in the highly publicized litigation involving Chicago’s Pritzker family in the United States and the Bahamas, the America’s Cup trust litigation in New York, and multi-billion dollar trust litigation in Europe and the Caribbean.

Basil is the contributing editor of Chambers Global Practice Guides: Private Wealth 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, and was the author of the U.S. chapter in this guide in several editions. He also co-authored the U.S. chapter of The Private Wealth and Private Client Review (2nd to 12th editions) as part of The Law Reviews series.

He is a member of The International Academy of Estate and Trust Law, The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (“STEP”), and the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (“ACTEC”). He has been a trustee of the Leeds Castle Foundation and a member of the board of trustees of the American Foundation for the Blind.