Marcus Staff

Marcus specialises in cross-border trust and insolvency disputes, with a practice spanning the commercial courts of the Cayman Islands, the BVI and England at all levels. He joined Appleby in January 2025, having spent the previous 17 years in a leading commercial chancery chambers in London. Since joining, he has appeared on the Cayman side of a Hong Kong-Cayman dual creditors’ scheme of arrangement for Fantasia Holdings — securing court sanction for a USD 6.6 billion debt write-down — acted across a range of trust administration matters, and developed a civil litigation and fraud practice with a growing focus on cryptocurrency and crypto-token disputes.

His appellate practice has produced two landmark decisions, each repeatedly cited by senior courts throughout the common law world. In Schmidt v. Rosewood Trust Ltd [2003] UKPC 26, he was co-counsel for the successful appellant before the Privy Council in one of the most influential trusts cases of the last quarter-century. In Rubin v. Eurofinance SA [2012] UKSC 46, he was sole counsel for the successful appellant before the UK Supreme Court in the leading authority on cross-border insolvency enforcement — a decision that directly shaped the UNCITRAL Model Law on Recognition and Enforcement of Insolvency-Related Judgments (2018).