The Company
Dr Stephen Castell is one of the UK's leading professional consultants, and business builders, in the increasingly convergent areas of IT, telecommunications, broadcasting and the media and is Chairman of CASTELL Consulting, his own consultancy company. He specialises in the active strategising, planning, management and development of systems and businesses in information and communications technologies, broadcasting and the media, and in analysing and influencing the financial, market, economic, regulatory and legal factors which affect them. He has established a special reputation in developing businesses in voice telephony and in satellite communications, databroadcasting and strategic value-added services; and in being amongst those leading the discussion of the 'legal reliability' of information systems and technologies.
As an Expert Witness in software litigation and computer criminal prosecutions he has been involved in a wide range of cases including what is thought to be the largest civil action over a software development contract to come to trial in the English High Court. He is also a (CEDR-trained) Mediator, (ICC) Arbitrator and Expert Determiner.
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CASTELL Consulting's clients have included: Airtours plc (Expert Witness in its action versus EDS) |
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A noted business and financial innovator, with an earlier background in mathematics, industrial research and merchant banking, Dr Castell has established a reputation for initiating, leading or assisting in the building of multimillion pound businesses in voice and data communications and broadcasting, information and software services. He was one of the pioneers of the Over The Counter Market in the UK where he was responsible for identifying and assessing several hundred high-technology and telecommunications companies over a 5-year period, participating in the preparation of flotation prospectuses and serving as Non-Executive Director on various Company Boards. In 1982, he was the founder Technical Director of the venture capital funded International Communications Technology Holdings SA, based in Luxembourg and listed in London, and was Chairman of its UK subsidiary Telephone Broadcasting Systems plc.
Dr Castell has presented papers at many International Conferences, for example, SATELCOM '91, Bucharest, Romania, which was the first pan-European satellite communications conference to be co-sponsored by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the European Space Agency (ESA) and Eutelsat. Another example was the First World Congress Multimedia, Barcelona, October 1993, where he contributed a presentation "Channel 5 - A national digital broadband communications highway". He is a prolific author on business, technology, legal, regulatory and financial matters and a correspondent for The Computer Law and Security Report. He is the author of the best-selling Computer Bluff (1983), and The APPEAL Report (1990) on the admissibility of computer evidence in court, and a contributor to Sweet and Maxwell's Encyclopedia of Information Technology Law. In 1980, in a letter to the Financial Times, he coined the term Business Television.
Recent expert witness assignments
During the
first half of 2010, Dr Castell worked intensively as appointed expert on
behalf of a major international energy sector company in its dispute over
the quantum of damages appropriate for replacement of a UK Government Data
Centre after its destruction in an accident for which it was liable. The
claim was for over £10m. Expert audit, loss verification, capacity
assessment, and careful analyses and 'technical refresh cycle' modelling
of a schedule of hundreds of items of high-end mainframe, server and
datacommunications ICT equipment were carried out. An expert report was
prepared and served into Court providing professional quantitatively and
commercially justified technical estimates and opinions as to the proper
replacement valuation to be applied in all the circumstances. Settlement
of the dispute on satisfactory terms was achieved days before a trial was
due to start in the English High Court. The insights achieved into the
current status of the global refurbished second-user ICT market have
subsequently been applied by way of currently ongoing discussions with the
Cabinet Office of HM Government, in connection with the British Coalition
Administration's policy initiative to cut public spending, in order to
reduce the massive National Deficit, by billions of pounds per year. See
'Government could save £8bn by choosing second-user hardware', Dr Stephen
Castell; letter published in Computer Weekly,8-14 June 2010.
During the second half of
2010, Dr Castell was appointed expert in a high-profile IT systems
contract case in the NSW Supreme Court, Sydney, Australia, concerning the
failed 'TCard' Integrated Ticketing and Transport System project there.
This involved a claim for AU$90m, with a cross-claim for AU$200m+: http://www.intellectualpropertylawyers.com.au/news/2010/2/24/nsw-ticketing-fiasco-a-winner-for-lawyers/
(and see also http://www.zdnet.com.au/topic/pttc/
and http://www.smh.com.au/technology/enterprise/smartcard-operator-branded-dishonest-20100411-s0w2.html).
Dr Castell's initial expert's report was produced in February 2011. He
subsequently submitted a Further Expert Report in response to the other
side's expert's report. An 'Expert Conclave' process, starting in December
2011, was underway, towards producing an Experts' Joint Agree/Disagree
Report, when the case settled, just before its scheduled trial
commencement in mid-February 2012:
http://m.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/tcard-battle-settled-out-of-court-20120217-1tegm.html
http://www.bankingday.com/nl06_news_selected.php?act=2&stream=1&selkey=12807&hlc=2&hlw=
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/failed-t-card-project-settled-out-of-court/story-e6freuy9-1226273878628
http://m.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/tcard-battle-settled-out-of-court-20120217-1tegm.html
Commencing early 2011 Dr Castell directed a CASTELL Senior Associate Consultant, a leading University Professor of Computational Fluid Dynamics ('CFD'), provided by CASTELL Consulting and involved as advising expert to a major long-term patent dispute between two of the world's leading aero-engine manufacturers (USA and European) concerning swept fan blades, applying and assessing CFD analyses, methodologies and computational results. This dispute, as to the validity and possible infringement of the patent(s) concerned, was expected to come to trial in the English High Court in autumn 2011; however the case settled a few weeks earlier.