Richard Swinburn

Practice Areas

Richard advises energy and natural resources companies, commodity trading companies and banks in connection with all aspects of their commodities-related business, including financing, trading or transportation of bulk commodities.

Richard is regularly ranked in Band 1 by Chambers and is widely recognised by other leading independent legal directories.

Richard provides support to clients (a) when considering a new business opportunity and wanting to assess the risks associated with that opportunity, (b) having assessed the risks, when structuring and documenting the transaction, and (c) once a contract or transaction is in place, but counterparty risk or market conditions are negatively impacting its execution.

Richard’s workload is a mix of advisory, transactional and dispute resolution. On the advisory side, unsurprisingly much of the last 18 months was spent advising in relation to the direct and indirect market consequences across the energy sector (especially LNG/coal/oil) of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On the transactional side, Richard has extensive experience of structuring and documenting the commercial arrangements linked to the acquisition, disposal or restructuring of assets or business in the energy and commodities sectors.

Richard handles a large number of trade related disputes in arbitration and before courts in the UK and internationally. Much of his current dispute caseload also stems from the extreme market volatility of the last 2-3 years.