Richard Neylon
Partner
About Richard
Richard handles major incidents and disputes for marine, liability, war, kidnap & ransom, art/specie, cyber and special risks underwriters and their assureds. He heads HFW’s global Complex Environments team.
He has expertise in managing and resolving incidents in complex and hostile environments. He has played a central role in coordinating and resolving over 200 detention, hijacking, kidnapping and extortion cases worldwide over the last 15 years, dealing with the initial incident through to managing the recovery and post-recovery phases. He is generally recognised as the leading lawyer globally in this field. He also regularly deals with unlawful detentions, drug seizures, fraud and similar complex problems that companies which operate globally can become exposed to. A lot of his work involves mitigating the potential liabilities arising from major incidents.
Richard is also a recognised specialist in handling major marine casualties and acts for a range of shipowners, charterers and insurers, in wet and dry shipping disputes. He has been involved in many of the industry’s most high-profile incidents. He has particular experience of collisions, fires/explosions, salvage, piracy, capture/seizure, groundings, unsafe port claims and war risks – often involving complex multi-jurisdictional litigation and arbitration. He has been heavily involved in resolving incidents in all of the major maritime conflict areas, including Somali, West Africa, Russia/Ukraine, the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf.
Richard is also a popular choice for handling urgent interim remedies in the London High Court, such as freezing injunctions and anti-suit injunctions. He has arbitrated and litigated cases at all levels, including successfully before the UK Supreme Court.
He has addressed various governments, law enforcement agencies and non-governmental organisations on industry’s response to incidents in complex environments, and has developed a network of contacts in government, the military, private military, financial institutions and intelligence agencies.
Richard lectures regularly in the UK and internationally on crisis response, shipping, and insurance topics, and has contributed articles to various publications.
Richard is a founder member of the Hostage Support Partnership (HSP), which was “commended” by the United Nations Security Council on 7 November 2017 in Security Council Resolution 2383 (2017) for its work securing the release of the 26 hostages who were held for four and a half years in Somalia. In 2019 and 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General again “commended” and “recognised” the HSP’s other work.
Richard and his team are also former winners of Lloyd’s List Corporate Social Responsibility Award which was awarded in recognition of the outstanding pro bono work the team undertook to secure the release of 48 “forgotten” hostages in Somalia. In 2021, Richard was identified and depicted in the book Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Mission to Rescue the Hostages the World Forgot (ISBN 978-178578-702-7) which tells the harrowing story of the hostages’ ordeal. Richard is a former winner of the prestigious Lloyd’s List Global Maritime Lawyer of the Year Award.