Former Head of the UK Family Office at Stonehage, David McLellan, to join Withers in Zurich

David McLellan will be joining Withers in Zurich with effect from January 2015.

David is an English / Australian qualified lawyer specialising in private client, fiduciary and international tax advisory. He assists global financial institutions, trustees and wealth owning families with international taxation, estate planning, asset protection and succession planning. He is well versed in the complex international taxation, legal and regulatory issues faced by global wealth owning families and has a special interest in cross-generational succession planning & risk management.

David also has significant business leadership experience in relation to strategy, change & operational management.

Talking to Tax Grotto about his new role, David commented:

“I am absolutely delighted to join Withers and look forward to helping them further build up their Zurich wealth planning operation as well as to use their Zurich office to champion Withers’ global expertise and work with colleagues around the world on complex international mandates.

While I have had over 20 years of experience in various roles in the private banking and wealth management sphere and have always worked closely with wealth owning families, I am very excited to get back into legal practice and once again become the independent and trusted advisor to clients. Switzerland still has its challenges but it will always remain a key global financial centre – risks have simply moved to the individual with an ever higher need for advice. So an extremely interesting time to join Withers.”

Prior to joining Withers, David was Executive Director & Head of the UK Family Office at Stonehage. He is also the former Group Chief Executive Officer of the Rothschild Trust Group and member of the Executive Board of Rothschild Private Bank & Trust (where he responsible for 200 plus staff & 10 offices). Prior to that, David had worked as an international tax & trust lawyer with Baker & McKenzie and Ernst & Young; and was also involved with the launch and establishment of LawInContext (Baker & McKenzie’s online legal knowledge management arm) as General Counsel & Chief Operating Officer.

David has worked in each of London, Zurich and Melbourne and is a dual Swiss Australian national.