Caroline Thomas

Caroline is a lawyer and arbitrator with a focus on cross-border matters. She qualified in England & Wales in 2008, in Hong Kong in 2010 and in New York in 2022.

Industry sectors Caroline is particularly familiar with include (re)insurance, shipping and trade, energy, telecoms, tech, pharma and construction. Her practice areas of focus are dispute resolution, regulatory law and data privacy.

Caroline has extensive experience (over 50 cases) as counsel and arbitrator in international arbitrations (including HKIAC, ICC, LCIA, LMAA and SIAC arbitrations) and has written and advised an NGO on investor state arbitration. In addition, she has handled court cases in England & Wales and in Hong Kong and helped clients supervise disputes heard before courts in many other jurisdictions. Caroline holds an LL.M focusing on arbitration from Columbia University (with honours), is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and is on numerous arbitration panels and lists.

Having spent several years in a legal and policy role at the Insurance Authority of Hong Kong (2018-2020), Caroline is not only very familiar with Hong Kong’s insurance regulatory regime, but also with other insurance and financial services regulatory regimes both in Hong Kong and in other leading financial centres. Caroline frequently handles the regulatory aspects of M&A transactions (particularly involving insurance), licence and other applications, as well as thorny regulatory issues. A holder of a Master’s Degree in Economics from Trinity College Dublin, Caroline enjoys advising on competition law. She also advises on AML, data protection (under the GDPR and Hong Kong law), as well as on sanctions – and has advised on steps to be taken following an AML or sanctions breach.

Caroline is fluent in German and French, conversational in Spanish and Italian and is learning Mandarin.