Campbell Johnston Clark (CJC) heads towards its 15th anniversary in September 2025, announcing new appointments and promotions from within which aim to consolidate its position as a centre of excellence in maritime law. With offices in the UK, Singapore and the USA, CJC continues to grow its activities across casualty handling, maritime disputes and ship finance, and all that happens in between.
Publication of the first issue of CJC Currents in 2025 offers an opportunity to take stock of Campbell Johnston Clark’s development in its 15th anniversary year.
After all, opportunities to draw attention to much of the work that we do are rare, given that it is conducted on the basis of confidentiality.
Such is the case for our transactions team, who in recent months have been involved in a share purchase agreement covering transfer of ownership for several reefer vessels to a joint venture, also advising bankers and preparing security documents on a loan to a Greek tanker owner.
With the latest work including a share purchase agreement covering the sale of a group of semi-open hatch vessels and multi-year contracts to serve UK Government needs, these are busy times for CJC’s commercial and financial specialists. The steady stream of work also includes sale and purchase, export credit backed pre- and post- delivery new build vessel financing, sale and leaseback arrangements, and financing focusing on installing “green” equipment.
In this issue, we highlight one aspect of our S&P advisory work in contract law, by offering guidance on how the legal claim included in a maritime lien can survive a vessel sale, even if a ship is purchased in without prior knowledge of the claim.
Elsewhere, we document the firm’s continuing involvement in some of the key cases in maritime law, including an English High Court ruling on the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims 1976 (as amended) after X-Press Pearl.
Significant wins have also been secured for CJC clients over the period, with one covering fraud by a shipper in which our team successfully represented Maersk A/S, summarised here, and others already included in the last issue of Currents in 2024.
As our 2024 celebration of 10 years in Singapore demonstrated, CJC set its sights early on developing as a business ready to offer wet and dry expertise across multiple jurisdictions. The same ambition drove our move – just over five years ago - to open CJC’s Miami office.
Today, CJC has 22 directors, including a combination of partners attracted to the firm from elsewhere and many who have joined CJC and then been promoted from within. We are also proud to note that 60% of newly appointed CJC directors for the 2024 and 2025 period have been women.
Further information on our formal plans for celebrating the foundation of CJC will be given as our 15th anniversary approaches in September, but we will be offering our clients and partners plenty of briefing and networking opportunities in the meantime. Building on our successful series of seminars in 2024, CJC is finalising details of its full schedule for 2025, and is offering to provide briefings on key topics on request. For more details, see here.