Jonathan Burt

Spear's Review

A former managing director of Barclays’ trust companies with more than 25 years’ experience, Harbottle & Lewis' Jonathan Burt is a deft hand at analysing the impact of varying factors on his clients. ‘My clients are looking for pragmatic and practical solutions to the efficient structuring of their investments,’ he explains. ‘Getting clients to understand the outcome of a complicated area of the law like tax is a rare skill.’

He specialises in advising internationally mobile entrepreneurs and wealth owners on their legal affairs. Although his work always has a cross-border element, most clients will have a UK nexus.

Clients ‘have a view to maximise and protect the value for the long-term benefit of their families and charitable interests’, Burt explains.

Adviser Profile

Burt has 25 years of experience in the business, having worked as a partner at Baker & McKenzie, and later as managing director at Barclays between 2008 and 2012, as well as a partner at Harcus Sinclair from 2012 to 2018. He specialises in advising internationally mobile entrepreneurs and wealth owners on their legal affairs, and although his work always has a cross-border element, most clients will have some nexus with the UK through tax residency or domicile or investment in business or real estate.

‘My clients are looking for pragmatic and practical solutions to the efficient structuring of their investments. They have a view to maximise and protect the value for the long-term benefit of their families and charitable interests,’ explains Burt, who relishes outlining practical solutions to clients. The financial crisis, the erosion of banking secrecy and the increase in global transparency have reshaped the wealth management industry over the past decade, and his clients have had to adapt. ‘The environment for wealthy people is being shaped by transparency and the automatic exchange of information programmes and beneficial ownership registers,’ he explains. ‘People understand that the world has changed and it is important to be structured compliantly. As confidentiality has been eroded, it is important that whatever structure is put in place has substance, is compliant and can withstand scrutiny.’

Since joining the firm in 2018, Burt has been involved in several significant, ‘highly technical’ cases surrounding the application of the transfer of assets abroad regime. ‘These cases involved considering the changes to the transfer of assets abroad regime as a result of the changes to the taxation of resident non-domiciliaries, with a particular reference to the use of trust structures by persons who became deemed domiciled in the UK under the new rules,’ Burt says.