On April 10, 2025, Vanessa King as chair of the STEP BVI branch presented John Glasson with the STEP Founder’s Award as a token of gratitude for the wonderful work which he has done on behalf of STEP BVI.
John Glasson is regarded as the “father” of the BVI’s VISTA trust legislation. He and his wife Sheena first visited the BVI in 1996 a few months after the BVI’s first trust specialist, Chris McKenzie, had moved to the BVI and during his first visit John spent several months in the jurisdiction undertaking industry – wide training on various issues of trust law. In those days BVI trusts were in their infancy: the first attempt to modernise BVI trust legislation, in the form of the Trustee (Amendment) Act, 1993, had only recently come into effect and so BVI trusts were few and far between, although beginning to take off, whereas, in those days, most practitioners in the industry were relatively unfamiliar with trusts. This being the case, John gave a series of presentations on various essential aspects of trust law to the financial services industry. John was uniquely placed to undertake this exercise: he was the founding editor of International Trust Laws, a looseleaf publication which summarised various ingredients of the trust laws of each of the leading jurisdictions and which contained expert commentaries by leading global academics and practitioners on various important issues such as forced heirship, purpose trusts and conflict of laws.
It was during his first 1996 visit that John told Chris about his idea to the effect that a legislative solution was sorely needed to address the difficulties which arise when shares in companies are placed in trust and that, especially given that the BVI’s main product was its international business company, the jurisdiction would potentially benefit considerably from such law reform.
In 1997 the BVI Branch of STEP was formed, with Chris as chair, and the first resolution which was passed by the members of the Branch was to form a committee, the Trust & Succession Law Review Committee, whose remit was to make proposals to the BVI Government in relation to further trust and estate law reform, with its principal objective of making BVI trusts more attractive to settlors and their advisers. It was John’s ideas in terms of providing a legislative solution for problems of trust law which arise from the ownership of company shares which led to the BVI’s highly acclaimed and increasingly popular VISTA trust legislation; many of John’s other ideas have borne fruit in other legislative developments which have taken place over the last two decades or so. John has spent many hundreds of hours assisting the Committee with its many legislative proposals, including those which led to the Trustee (Amendment) Acts of 2003, 2013 and 2021, the BVI’s PTC regulations and each of the other legislative reforms in the field of trusts and estates which have come into effect since 2003. John has remained a member of the Committee for more than 27 years and the jurisdiction has benefited enormously from John’s creative ideas and hard work.
A dinner was held at Le Sacre Coeur restaurant in London, which was also attended by three other Trust &Succession Law Review Committee members, Vanessa King, Matthew Howson and Chris McKenzie at which the presentation was made to John.