Spear's Review

Robert Brodrick, partner and former chair of Payne Hicks Beach’s management board, relishes his role as a high-flying private client adviser, and is dedicated to advising clients on much more than their tax obligations.

‘The role has evolved over the last 20 years from being very much tax-focused in the late 1990s to being a mixture of tax and succession and family governance advice,’ he tells Spear’s. 

Increasingly focused on cross-border work, particularly in the Middle East, Brodrick often travels to meet with families to discuss the creation and reorganisation of their trusts and UK property holding structures, or to advise his clients’ offshore trustees.

‘The sorts of things we get involved in are often cross-jurisdictional, so we’re dealing with something that straddles the UK and the US, or the US and the Middle East,’ he says. 

Adviser Profile

Robert is a partner in the firm’s private client department, having served for seven years as the firm’s chairman until May 2026.

With over 25 years’ experience, Robert provides specialist tax, trust and estate planning advice for wealthy individuals, their advisers and trustees. His clients include international families with assets in multiple jurisdictions, UK-based families, landed estate owners and business people. He focuses on three main geographic areas: Middle East, US/UK and UK domestic (including international clients living in the UK).

Robert acts as a trustee of a number of UK trusts, including several that hold heritage assets, and he also acts as executor and is a court-appointed administrator of a large contentious estate. He acts as trusted adviser to several international families with complex offshore trust structures. He advises on contentious trust and probate work, and has recently been involved in applications to vary and rectify trusts both in the UK and offshore. Robert has developed a reputation for advising a number of high-profile US families based in the UK (alongside their existing US advisers) and is very experienced at advising Middle Eastern families on the creation and reorganisation of trusts, including sharia-compliant structures. He is known for his sensitive handling of complicated family situations.

Robert is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. He is a prolific legal commentator, speaking at conferences and seminars in a number of locations worldwide, including London, New York, Geneva, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Dubai, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Robert has received numerous industry awards throughout his career. He is regarded as ‘outstanding in his field’ and classed as ‘one of the world’s elite private client lawyers providing expertise to ultra-high-net-worth clients’.