Jonathan Watson

Jonathan Watson

Managing Associate, Litigation, Arbitration & Investigations, London

"I advise clients on a wide range of commercial disputes and investigations, with a particular focus on large-scale and business critical litigation proceedings. I aim to provide clear, strategic advice to clients to solve their most complex and sensitive matters."

Overview

Education and qualifications

Overview

Jonathan is a Managing Associate in the Litigation, Investigations and Arbitration practice, based in London.

Jonathan represents large corporates on a wide range of contentious matters including contractual, competition, banking and insolvency disputes. His clients are drawn from a range of sectors, including payment schemes, commodities, utilities, healthcare and telecommunications. He has extensive litigation experience and also advises clients on business crime investigations and sanctions compliance. Jonathan has undertaken secondments to BP’s Competition Team in London and Linklaters' Amsterdam office.

Work highlights

Jonathan’s recent matters include:

  • Advising Telefonica on its defence of High Court litigation brought by the administrators of Phones4U regarding an alleged anti-competitive, collective withdrawal from Phones4U by mobile network operators, culminating in an 11-week trial with over forty witnesses of fact.
  • Advising Visa on its defence of proceedings brought by an independent ATM operator which alleges that Visa’s rules relating to ATM transactions breach various European and domestic competition laws.
  • Acting for Glencore on its defence of two sets of proceedings in the Commercial Court (the latter of which was a virtual trial) and in the Court of Appeal relating to alleged breaches of a tax indemnity and tax warranties in the sale of the Las Bambas copper mine in Peru (Minera Las Bambas S.A. and anr v Glencore Queensland Ltd and ors [2019] EWCA Civ 972).
  • Advising a major utilities company in relation to an investigation by the Environment Agency into alleged breaches of the Environmental Permitting Regulations.
  • Acting for LGBT Foundation and Stonewall on their written intervention in support of the appeal to the Supreme Court in relation to the legality of a voter ID pilot schemes (on the application of Coughlan) v Minister for the Cabinet Office [2022] UKSC 11).

Education and qualifications

Jonathan has a BA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford and completed his LPC at the University of Law in London.

Jonathan has subsequently undertaken a course on International Asset Tracing and Recovery with the Queen Mary University in conjunction with Blackstone Chambers.