Patrick Selley

Patrick has extensive experience in international and domestic arbitration including LCIA, AAA, and LMAA forums, acting for clients across sectors such as insurance and shipping, and high-value commercial disputes.

• Acted for numerous shipping clients in LMAA Arbitrations against a variety of Romanian Government agencies.
• Acted for a well-known yacht manufacturer in LMAA arbitration defending build-quality disputes.
• Successfully acted for a Lloyd’s names’ agency in an arbitration that concerned denial of cover on whole account excess of loss reinsurance policy.

Patrick has represented a wide range of clients in high-stakes personal guarantee disputes, including statutory demands, undue influence, enforcement, and misrepresentation claims, often involving cross-border and regulatory issues.

• Successfully applied to set aside a statutory demand that had been served on a client for almost £50 million in respect of a personal guarantee for a loan to a company engaged in the construction of a biogas plant, winning the case both in the first instance and on appeal leading to judgement for the client with costs in a six-figure sum. The principal area of dispute was the representations that had been made as to funding availability which had been given in advance by the lender’s representative and upon which the guarantors had relied on agreeing to give the guarantee.
• Represented a TV and film producer, defending a claim where a personal guarantee is alleged to have been given for production funding in relation to a project that was subsequently affected by COVID-19.
• Currently representing two husband and wife guarantors who had been coerced into personally guaranteeing money lent to their son’s company and where the guarantee had also been secured on the family home. The lenders were not only aware of the fact that the guarantee had been procured by undue influence but, extraordinarily, also deliberately contrived to ensure that legal advice given was without the sight of the underlying loan documentation. Therefore, whilst maintaining the appearance of legal advice, such advice was defective.
• Obtained a highly favourable settlement while representing a consortium of senior medical professionals who had given personal guarantees for rent payable by a joint venture company, to a multinational healthcare operator which was the other party to the joint venture. The defence was based upon the multinational having breached the joint venture agreement for its own benefit, thereby causing the loss in the joint venture company. Settlement followed shortly after leave being granted by the court for the clients to bring an application for the interim taking account.
• Successfully represented two north London property developers who had given guarantees in respect of lending to an SPV carrying out a very substantial redevelopment project. Statutory demands were set aside based upon the case that the lender was in breach of contract in calling an event of default under the loan agreement, which only became apparent when the detailed accounting position was unpicked. Also an issue was the construction of the particular loan-to-value covenants in the loan agreement, in circumstances where the lender sought to invoke the covenant at a time when, as intended, the buildings had been gutted prior to redevelopment. Interestingly, emails also came to light which indicated that the lender’s parent bank, based in Australia, had made a policy decision to pull out of all London development lending.
• Acted for a French publishing company seeking a bankruptcy order for non-payment of a substantial personal guarantee given by director of a joint venture company. The guarantor was claiming that the project has been affected by COVID-19, even though the first case of COVID-19 arrived in this country three months after the original repayment date.
• Successfully represented a British private lender based in the US in enforcing personal guarantees given to secure repayment of loan notes owed by a BVI corporation. Involved a claim against the guarantor based in Singapore and the issuing of winding up petitions against the BVI debtor company.
• Successfully set aside a number of statutory demands for directors of a property development companies following unilateral decisions by banks to cease lending in respect of London-based property development projects and the consequent “manufacture” of breaches of the financial covenants as a pretext for withdrawing loans and calling on the personal guarantees.
• Acted successfully for guarantors in defending a claim by Barclays by scrutinising the bank’s inability to produce original documents and Barclays’ entire record-keeping system.

Patrick has extensive experience acting for and against banks, including in disputes involving misrepresentation, wrongful default calls, offset rights, and failures to provide agreed funding.

• Acted for the director of Biogas plant in a £40m dispute with funders over the failure to fund construction of gas to grid plant as agreed and leading to project failure.
• Advised a borrower on rights to call in policies of mortgage guarantee insurance following the bank’s assertion of event of default on a £250 million loan portfolio.
• Instructed by members of the family of a man who had suffered a tragic accident as a result of which he had lost mental capacity, but who had previously given guarantees to an Irish bank that had in turn sold the loan portfolio to an aggressive American debt fund. Aspects of the bank’s behaviour in realising its position were reprehensible, which opened the door for a change of direction for the case from a banking case to one about disability discrimination, which somewhat wrong-footed the bank and resulted in a very favourable settlement.

Admitted as a solicitor in Hong Kong 1986

CEDR and ADR Net trained Mediator

Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators