Matt is Managing Partner of Kennedys in Australia and a member of the Global Strategy Board. Matt was based in Kennedys’ London office for 21 years before relocating to Australia in 2015.
Matt has broad experience across multiple insurance lines and has acted in professional indemnity and financial lines matters on behalf of accountants, trustees, independent financial advisors, construction professionals and brokers. He has considerable experience advising on coverage issues including aggregation and year of account issues, and on multi-layer programmes.
Matt’s insurance / reinsurance practice includes significant experience advising on the interpretation of multi-line global master policies, for financial institutions, casualty, property/energy and mining. He has acted on cases arising from the "pinking" of white uPVC windows, the insolvency of offshore trust structures, the Enron, Worldcom, IPO laddering and Madoff financial scandals, oil pollution, the failure of propulsion units on cruise ships, the destruction of a major retail distribution centre by fire, and a variety of catastrophic events including Hurricane Katrina, the Varanus Island gas explosion, the flooding of mines in Queensland, the Thai floods, the Great East Asian Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami, various geotechnical failures and the Kennecott mine collapse.
Matt has advised extensively on the fallout from the Australian Banking Royal Commission, on Class actions in Australia and on COVID -19 insurance and reinsurance issues.
He regularly advises markets of insurers or reinsurers on matters of English or Australian law, or acts as co-coordinating counsel where disputes are governed by other laws or jurisdictions including in Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand and the US.
Qualifications
- Dual qualified in England and Australia
