Having been a painter of abstracted landscapes since leaving Cambridge, exhibiting at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Sebastian turned to law, a decision encouraged by Middle Temple’s award of a Harmsworth Exhibition in 1994 and Harmsworth Scholarship in 1995.

Sebastian has been fortunate enough to be able to specialise from the beginning on modern Chancery: his first major case was in commercial fraud, and since then he has developed a particular emphasis on insolvency, both corporate and personal (as witnessed by the large number of cases in the BPIRs), and increasingly on shareholder disputes. He has advised the government of Hong Kong in insolvency, and during 2001 and 2002 was counsel to the American joint receivers and managers of a Turks and Caicos Islands company, the Chinese subsidiary of which ran an executive housing and golf course project in Shanghai. He has made appearances in the TCI both before its Chief Justice and Court of Appeal.

Here, Sebastian was commended by the Court of Appeal in Ashurst v Pollard [2001] Ch 595 for an ‘admirably clear and succinct argument’. In any case, at whatever level, that is always his aim.