Lord Chief Justice Sir John Thomas has appointed a senior barrister with extensive commercial law experience in banking, insurance, and misrepresentation claims as a part-time Deputy High Court judge. Andrew Henshaw QC of Brick Court Chambers (BCC) will sit for up to 30 days per year for a fixed four-year term.
His appointment was made on the recommendation of the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) following a competition, according to the chambers.
“He will continue to practise, specialising in commercial litigation and arbitration, public law, and EU law,” BCC said in a statement.
After studying law in Cambridge, Henshaw qualified as a solicitor in 1986 and a Solicitor-Advocate in 1998. He went on to work as a litigator at Linklaters, where he became a partner in 1994. The cases he handled as a solicitor include multi-national litigation arising from the collapse of the Maxwell empire, claims arising from corporate transactions, and complex derivatives disputes, according to his profile on BCC’s website.
Henshaw moved to the Bar in 2000 and joined BCC, and was appointed as a Queen’s counsel in 2013. He successfully defended Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaire and owner of Chelsea Football Club, in a case against Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky. The latter accused Abramovich of intimidating him into selling shares in Russian oil giant Sibneft, the BBC reported. A judge dismissed Berezovsky’s claims in 2012 and described the plaintiff as an “unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness.”
According to BCC, Henshaw has appeared in complex financial disputes (including Cassa di Risparmio v Barclays), jurisdiction disputes (such as UBS v HSH Nordbank) and injunction applications.
Last year, he acted for an intervenor in the Supreme Court hearing into whether the UK – without the backing of parliament – could begin the process of withdrawing from the European Union by triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The justices ruled eight to three that the government needed lawmakers’ approval.
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