Mr. Murray Burton, LLB
Mr. Burton is
a multi-disciplined business executive who has been based in Hong Kong for more than 36 years, with
highly placed local and regional contacts, and a sound business knowledge and
extensive experience within Asian markets.
In more recent years, Burton has focussed in a low key way upon
corporate investigative initiatives and assignments for clients, especially
litigation support for law firms, as well as the (online) betting and gaming
industry in Asia and
elsewhere. His background includes the
law, banking, and corporate investigations and security related
assignments.
His
early background academically involved achieving fluency in French and German,
and a healthy proficiency in Spanish. He then chose to study law. Graduating
from Edinburgh
University in 1970, Burton
practised in Scotland
as a conveyancing and commercial lawyer for a number of years, before moving to
Hong Kong in late 1976, to
join the pre-eminent law firm, Johnson Stokes & Master, now Mayer Brown
JSM.
He
cut his investigative teeth in the celebrated MacLennan case, which stole the
limelight in Hong Kong’s
legal circles for some 15 months in the early Eighties. John MacLennan, a young
expatriate Police Inspector, was found dead in his Police quarters, with five
gunshot rounds in his chest and lower abdomen. The death was the source of
endless speculation: was it murder, or suicide? Mr. Burton was appointed the
solicitor to the Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Sir T. L. Yang (subsequently
Chief Justice of Hong Kong).
His
business is now as a consultant for clients with assignments throughout the
Region, which typically involve potential or actual corporate fraud, background
profile and due diligence checks, asset tracing and recovery, litigation
support, crisis management and risk assessment, promoting proactive and
inventive corporate problem solving.
He has
represented over the period as an independent business consultant a variety of
clients in investigative assignments covering pre-transaction intelligence,
sensitive due diligence and background profile investigations, and competitor
intelligence and analysis on business partners etc. He was also employed as CEO Asia to Victor Chandler
International in the online betting and gaming industry prior to the amendments
to the legislation, and the resultant outcome thereof, to the Gambling
Ordinance in 2002. He has likewise represented a number of clients in Hong Kong as an advisor on many
different types of project and legal issues.
Mr Burton has strong demonstrated communication skills
in a number of differing cultural environments, and he is an accomplished
public speaker.