Earlier this month, Vanessa King as chair of the STEP BVI branch presented John Glasson with the STEP Founder’s Award as a token of gratitude for the wonderful work which he has done on behalf of STEP BVI.
John Glasson is regarded as the “father” of the BVI’s VISTA trust legislation. He and his wife Sheena first visited the BVI in 1996 a few months after the BVI’s first trust specialist, Chris McKenzie, had moved to the BVI
and during his first visit Glasson spent several months in the jurisdiction undertaking industry wide training on various issues of trust law.
In 1997 the BVI Branch of STEP was formed, with McKenzie as chair, and the first resolution which was passed by the members of the Branch was to form a committee, the Trust & Succession Law Review Committee, whose remit was to make proposals to the BVI Government in relation to further trust and estate law reform, with its principal objective of making BVI trusts more attractive to settlors and their advisers.
It was Glasson’s ideas in terms of providing a legislative solution for problems of trust law which arise from the ownership of company shares which led to the BVI’s highly acclaimed and increasingly popular VISTA trust legislation; many of his other ideas have borne fruit in other legislative developments which have taken place over the last two decades or so.
Glasson has spent many hundreds of hours assisting the Committee with its many legislative proposals, including those which led to the Trustee (Amendment) Acts of 2003, 2013 and 2021, the BVI’s PTC regulations and each of the other legislative reforms in the field of trusts and estates which have come into effect since 2003. He remained a member of the Committee for more than 27 years and the jurisdiction is said to have benefited enormously from Glasson’s creative ideas and hard work.
A dinner was held at Le Sacre Coeur restaurant in London, which was also attended by three other Trust &Succession Law Review Committee members, Vanessa King, Matthew Howson and Chris McKenzie at which the presentation was made to Glasson.