Ross Davidson

Practice Areas

Ross is an experienced private wealth lawyer based in Stephenson Harwood's Hong Kong office. He has expertise in international tax, trust law and cross-border estate planning.

Ross is qualified in England and Wales and has completed the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) Advanced Certificates in UK Tax for International Clients, Advising the Family Business, and Family and Business Governance.

Drawing on his experience working at leading corporate firms, Ross works with private clients requiring coordinated advice on their personal and business affairs. This typically involves combining with other lawyers to serve their tax planning, immigration, transactional, commercial, and dispute resolution needs.

His clients include high and ultra-high-net-worth families, investors, executives, their businesses, as well as their professional advisers and service providers, such as family offices, trustees, private banks, and charities.

He is a multilingual lawyer (English, Mandarin, and Italian) who often acts as a single point of contact for internationally mobile families requiring coordinated global advice, for instance, when relocating or investing abroad.

Ross frequently deals with the establishment or restructuring of asset-holding structures, ranging from several million to billions of pounds in value, to achieve objectives such as succession planning, asset protection and tax efficiency. In particular, he works closely with settlors, beneficiaries, and trustees of offshore trusts to develop effective strategies for managing, preserving, and protecting their assets. He is currently appointed as an executive committee member of the Hong Kong Trustees' Association.

In 2020, he was seconded to the wealth planning department of a private bank based in Hong Kong, where he developed a good understanding of the estate planning issues relevant to families based in the Asia Pacific region. After years of travelling to the region for business, he relocated to Hong Kong in 2023.