Julie
Murphy-O'Connor
Partner
Julie is a partner and co-head of Matheson’s Disputes and Investigations Group in Matheson.
Julie advises on a wide range of contentious matters including corporate, commercial, aviation and financial services disputes and investigations as well as governance, including in regulated sectors. She specialises in cross-border disputes and fraud, asset recovery, enforcement and jurisdictional issues.
Julie has significant expertise in shareholder disputes and contentious corporate restructuring and insolvency matters (for which she was ranked for many years) and regularly advises in relation to directors’ duties, corporate governance and risk.
Julie is a CEDR accredited mediator. She was appointed to the Council of the Irish Commercial Mediation Association in 2019. She is a Certified Banking Director and a non-executive director of Dell Bank International DAC, where she also chairs its Remuneration and Nominations Committee. Julie was a non-executive director of Irish Semi-State company, Coillte DAC, from 2013 to 2022, by ministerial appointment, and chaired its Remuneration Committee.
Julie is co-author of the Commercial Litigation Association of Ireland’s Practitioners’ Guide to the Commercial Court in Ireland and of the Law Society of Ireland’s Insolvency Law textbook. She is a frequent contributor to Irish and international legal publications and is regularly invited to speak at industry conferences.
Julie was named Client Choice Award Winner for Asset Recovery (Ireland) in 2020.
Experience and Education
Julie’s experience include:
- Representing four of world’s largest Aircraft Leasing Companies in proceedings against multiple global insurers/syndicates, with claims totalling almost 2 billion, with parallel proceedings running in the UK and the US.
- Representing Rippling in its highly publicised investigation and commercial court case involving a claim relating to corporate espionage and theft of trade secrets, involving Rippling’s competitor Deel, Inc.
- Representing various Opel entities (now part of the Stellantis Group) in relation to the defence of complex, high-value, multi-party litigation and multiple proceedings arising from an extensive fire in Douglas Village Shopping Centre carpark and in the joint investigation, which involves over 25 experts representing an extensive number of parties.
- Representing an Irish plc in relation to a number of civil claims arising from a highly publicised investigation by the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement followed by the appointment of High Court Inspectors to investigate the company.
- Advising credit servicing firms and investment funds in relation to interest overcharging issues affecting acquired loan portfolios and associated remediation projects.
- Advising lender and receiver on enforcement, trading and sale of private hospital group.
- Advising a financial institution in relation to the design and implementation of a remediation scheme for customers arising out of mis-selling claims relating to certain investment products and assisting on their dealings with the Central Bank of Ireland and the Financial Services Ombudsman.
- Representing a major domestic bank in relation to the recovery of multi-million dollar losses from its insurer arising from a major fraud in a US subsidiary.
- Representing a large Italian multinational manufacturer and distributor of electricity and gas in a successful jurisdictional challenge to the enforcement of an Albanian judgment in Ireland, as part of a broader enforcement strategy (so far France, Luxembourg, Ireland, New York and the Netherlands) on the part of the Albanian applicant.
- Advising a large financial institution on professional negligence for breach of duty and breach of undertaking against the borrowers’ solicitors and issues surrounding the forgery of certain transaction documents.
- Advising an international financial institution in its successful appeal of a High Court decision which overturned a decision of the FSPO concerning the bank’s right to adjust variable interest rates independently of ECB rates.
- Advising private equity funds in relation to complex and novel litigation arising from and in connection with the sale of loan portfolios by divesting financial institutions to specialty funds and alternative acquiring entities.
- Advising financial institutions in connection with the recovery of loans, enforcement of judgments, freezing orders and asset tracing.
- Representing a stockbroking firm in its defence of in a highly sensitive case brought against it by one of its customers in respect of a CFD exposures.
- Advising an international private equity company against an Irish plc oil company in a cross-border enforcement of a multi-million international arbitration award arising from a shareholder dispute in relation to a gas field in Poland.
- Representing minority shareholders in an Irish company with significant property interests in the UK in an oppression action and related injunctive proceedings restraining the attempted removal of one of the director / shareholders from all executive functions with £40 million of assets at risk.
- Advising a Canadian private equity investor and noteholder in relation to a shareholder dispute with an Irish pharma company.
- Advising an international financial institution in relation to resolving a highly sensitive and contentious matter involving a mis-selling claim by one of its ex-wealth managers and a related defamation.
- Representing an Irish pillar bank and a receiver in successfully defending claim for misrepresentation, breach of agreement and alleged sale of secured assets at undervalue.
- Advising the minority shareholder of a family business in connection with a petition for the just and equitable winding up of the company and in connection the ultimate resolution of what was a highly contentious shareholder dispute.
- Qualified as a solicitor in Ireland
- Academy of Private International Law, the Netherlands
- Leiden University, the Netherlands (Erasmus)
- Trinity College Dublin (LLB)
