Our Board

Nicholas Bishop as Chairman of the Board of Directors is currently the Regional Managing Director of Trident Trust.

Mr. Bishop was appointed to the chairmanship role by the newly formed Board of Directors of BVI Finance for 2021.

Mr. Bishop has over 30 years of experience within the financial services industry, including senior leadership roles across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Mr. Bishop joined Trident Trust as appointed Chief Operating Officer in 2018, then promoted to Regional Managing Director in 2019. Trident Trust is a global corporate, fiduciary and fund administrator. He has been sitting on BVI Finance’s Board of Directors since 2019.

Bio Coming Soon

Russell Crumpler is a Senior Managing Director with Teneo in the BVI, having joined Teneo following its acquisition of KPMG’s BVI Restructuring business.

Prior to joining Teneo, Russell was the Managing Director of Restructuring at KPMG in the BVI and the Head of Restructuring for KPMG’s Islands Group. Russell is a JIEB qualified FCA who has led the advisory team in the BVI since 2011 and has been working as a restructuring and insolvency specialist since 2000. He is a licensed insolvency practitioner in the BVI and the former chair of RISA (BVI) Limited, the BVI’s INSOL member organisation.

Russell has acted on some of the highest profile BVI Insolvency appointments of recent years including the main Luckin Coffee shareholder entities, Exential, Peak Hotels and Resorts, Titan and Victory Life. Together with his team Russell also delivers Corporate Finance, Forensic and other solutions for clients. Russell regularly speaks at industry conferences both in the BVI and internationally.

Russell has a broad range of restructuring experience, acting in a number of high profile multi-jurisdictional engagements that have involved recognition issues, litigation, asset tracing and other complex matters.

Selected Project Experience

• Court appointed liquidator of an entity used as a key vehicle in a $300-800m UAE originated fraud with up to 6,000 victims. This Liquidation is ongoing but has already resulted in the first published judgment approving third party liquidation funding in the BVI.
• Court appointed liquidator of an entity which held Euro100m in complex assets for the benefit of 7,000 policyholders in Scandinavia and which was placed into Liquidation by the regulator. The Liquidation process was fully completed within two years.
• Court appointed liquidator of a company that was a significant joint shareholder of one of the world’s most luxurious hotel brands (Aman Resorts). The company has been involved in significant litigation in multiple jurisdictions regarding ownership of the underlying assets and other asset tracing claims.
• Court appointed liquidator of a BVI company whose underlying entities owned the largest privately held oil & gas storage facilities in China.
• Court appointed liquidator of the main shareholder entities of China’s largest (by outlet) coffee chain.
• Receiver of various entities with roles to both protect assets pending the resolution of disputes and to take control and sell assets for value.
• Numerous voluntary liquidations of varying complexity – in one instance with multiple subsidiaries and in excess of $17bn of assets, and in others dealing with very high value real estate assets, regulated entities and complex estates of deceased individuals.
• Court appointments over BVI companies associated with UAE, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Ukraine, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, China, the UK, the US and other jurisdictions. Such appointments have included situations where there is a dispute between shareholders/stakeholders, where there is ongoing litigation and/or where asset tracing exercises are required.
• Russell and key members of KPMG BVI’s senior management team have extensive experience providing contingency planning, options analysis and early exit strategies across a wide variety of sectors. Furthermore, KPMG’s BVI team has been named Insolvency Practice of the Year in the BVI Finance awards for 2019 and 2020.

Simon Filmer is currently the Global Lead, Company Formation at Vistra.

He has more than 20 years of senior management experience in the fiduciary services industry and has considerable experience in the areas of corporate business, trusts and investment business. Simon is regularly consulted by regulators and governments on financial services matters, and has served on numerous industry committees, especially in the BVI. He is a frequent speaker at industry events, is recognized as a thought leader, and has been a driving force in the influential Vistra 2020 series, Vistra's flagship research on the corporate services industry.

Simon has a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree from the University of Manchester in the UK, is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, and a Member of the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners.  He was born and educated in the UK, is a long-term resident of the BVI, and is currently seconded to the UAE.

Johnny Law is a native of Hong Kong with extensive experience and technical knowledge in Australia and Hong Kong and fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, He is an insolvency and forensic accountant having acted in a wide range of forensic matters and insolvency and restructuring regime.

Johnny’s experience covers matters that have included company and personal affairs in Australia, Hong Kong, China, the United States of America, the British Virgin Islands and the Channel Islands.

Johnny is qualified as a CPA in Hong Kong and Australia, Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist.

Bio Coming Soon

George Weston is a partner in Harney's Corporate Practice Group and advises on all aspects of BVI corporate and commercial law, including mergers and acquisitions, takeovers, downstream private equity investments, joint ventures, public and private share offerings, capital raisings and corporate reorganisations. Although he works with clients in a wide range of industry sectors across the globe, George has particular expertise working with leading law firms and private equity investors on cross-border corporate acquisitions and joint ventures with a technology or real estate element, and leads our BVI hospitality sector group.

Prior to joining Harneys, George spent seven years in the London office of Paul Hastings, where he worked on a number of high profile corporate transactions and completed a secondment at JP Morgan Chase.

Sabinah Clement is the Managing Director of Intertrust Group’s BVI office which provides full service corporate, fiduciary and trust administration services for BVI entities. She has over 20 years’ experience within the financial services industry in senior leadership positions and has served on a number of consultative committees and sub-committees for BVI Finance over the years.

Sabinah’s qualifications include LL.M in Law and Corporate Governance from University of Portsmouth, Graduate Diploma in Law from University of Liverpool, and MBA from University of the West Indies. She is also a Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland.

Lorna Smith, OBE, was the Executive Director of BVI Finance. She is also the founder and Chief Executive Officer of LGS and Associates. Ms. Smith has more than three decades of experience at the highest levels of the public service in the British Virgin Islands. Over the course of her senior-level service, Ms. Smith developed extensive relationships with leaders from the business community, international NGO’s and government leaders from around the world.

Ms. Smith was the lead consultant in the negotiations of Tax Information Exchange Agreements with fourteen OECD countries on behalf of the Turks and Caicos Islands and Anguilla. She was also retained by the World Bank and thereafter the Commonwealth Secretariat to assist Member States of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) in meeting the international tax standard set by the OECD which they did with her assistance.

Ms. Smith was assigned to promote the territory’s interests in Asia by establishing BVI Asia House in Hong Kong. Previously she served as the first BVI Director of the London Office - the equivalent of a Diplomatic Mission.

A dynamic and engaging speaker, Ms. Smith regularly undertakes various speaking engagements. She is a regular speaker at conferences on financial services related matters as well as a contributor to various publications in the same area.

Ms. Smith was the first Director of BVI International Finance Centre - now called BVI Finance - which is charged with promoting the BVI Financial Services. Ms. Smith worked in close collaboration with the private sector, mounting promotional events world wide in funds, captive insurance, corporate business and trusts. Today, the BVI is recognized as one of the best regulated jurisdictions and a premier centre for international business.

Bio Coming Soon

Bio Coming Soon