Nick Elwell-Sutton

Nick Elwell-Sutton acts for businesses, senior executives and insurers in a wide range of employment related disputes, transactions and advisory matters. His sector experience includes insurance, financial services, broadcast media, business services, retail and aviation and often involves multi-jurisdictional aspects. This comprises strategic advice and planning as well as operational execution and typically involves counselling senior management and at board level.

Nick has significant experience in team moves and confidentiality and business protection matters as well as advising insurers and individuals on the regulatory issues around the SIMR/SMCR. He has significant experience in defending whistleblowing claims. On the transactional side, Nick has acted on numerous complex transactions, public, private and PE and frequently on cross border matters.

Nick is recommended in Who's Who Legal and Legal 500 and is a regular commentator on employment law matters in the press and broadcast media including on ITN news, BBC Worldwide, BBC Radio 4, The Times, Solicitors Journal and Insurance Day.

Nick also advised the Centre of Policy Studies on its submissions to the government on reform of employment law and wrote a chapter on the employment aspects for Outsourcing Legal Services: Impact on National Law Practices (Wolters Kluwer 2012).

His experience includes:

• Advising a listed U.S. financial services business on historic allegations of sexual misconduct and assault by members of its legal department and corresponding SRA complaint
• Advising a Fortune 500 retailer on the dismissal of its HR Director including concurrent claims in the UK and Netherlands with disputes as to law and jurisdiction under the Rome and Brussels conventions
• Acting for a listed global luxury cosmetics brand on an internal investigation into its HR function and its handling of grievances following a whistleblowing/ethics complaint
• Acting for a listed (re)insurer in relation to injunction proceedings against a former employee under the Protection from Harassment Act
• Carrying out an external investigation into bribery and corruption allegations involving an FCA regulated client's employees including an assessment of its systems and control and internal governance processes around the awarding of a large IT contract. This included advice on offences under the Bribery Act 2010 and Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the client's SAR reporting obligations as well as civil recovery of substantial sums paid connected to the contract
• Defence of whistleblowing claims against FCA regulated bodies
• Advising a NYSE financial services business on the cross-border outsourcing of its UK call and operations centres within the UK and Republic of Ireland involving c700 employees
• Acting for U.S.-listed insurer on its £250m acquisition of UK-listed insurer to include developing a retention and reward strategy, restructuring its management team and developing and executing its integration with an existing UK business via a move to a service company operating model together with related redundancies