Linklaters LLP

Aedamar Comiskey

Aedamar is Linklaters Global Head of Corporate and specialises in public and private M&A and regulatory and corporate governance advisory work. She is the lead relationship partner and boardroom adviser for many of the firm's FTSE clients. Aedamar recently led a number of high-profile M&A deals including advising Unilever on its defence of Kraft Heinz company's US$145bn approach; Visa Europe on its €18.37bn sale to Visa Inc; Amec Foster Wheeler on Wood Group's £2.2bn recommended offer; HSBC on the US$5.2bn sale of its Brazilian bank to Banco Bradesco; and Amlin on Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance's £3.48bn recommended offer.Aedamar is also a non-executive director of FTSE company, Hames Fisher and Sons plc.  

Alasdair Smith

Alasdair is a Managing Associate in the Linklaters London Pensions practice. He has a wide range of experience, including in relation to bespoke funding arrangements, scheme restructurings, contingent assets and multi-jurisdiction corporate transactions.

Alex Woodward

Alexander Naidenov

Alexander Naidenov is a U.S. partner in our London office and focuses on high yield and acquisition finance. He was previously with Cravath Swaine & Moore in New York and London. Alek has extensive experience in sponsor-driven financings, representing underwriters, issuers/sponsors and bridge lenders, including AnaCap (AnaCap Financial), Apollo (Lottomatica, Gamenet, Verallia), Bain (Edcon), Bridgepoint (Miller Homes, THOM, Care UK), Carlyle (Hexaware, SierraCol), Cerberus (WFS, Haya), CVC (Multiversity, GEMS Education, Tendam), EQT (Dometic), Hillhouse (Philips Domestic Appliances), KKR (A.T.U), PAI (Marcolin, Nuance), Qualium (Quick Restaurants), Rhône (Fluidra, Nestle Waters, Eden Springs, S&B Minerals), Triton (Assemblin, Bormioli, Ovako, Dematic, Orion Engineered Carbons), Unitas (Hyva), Warburg Pincus (AA) Alek has also worked on a number event-driven corporate leverage financings, including Kedrion, AMS/Osram, Eir, VistaJet, Corte Inglés, Hertz, CGG Veritas, Welltec, Perform Group, Viridian, Moto, Johnston Press, Carmeuse, Interxion, Dixons, SICPA (NOMA), Millicom, Gallery Group Alek is also involved in high yield restructurings, on creditor or debtor side, including Haya, Seven Energy, Towergate, Klockner Pentaplast, Eircom, WIND Hellas, Countrywide, Almatis, Safilo, Jazztel, Hilding Anders, Truvo and DSI.

Andrew Vickery

Andy is Head of the firm’s Structured Finance Group. He is a specialist in structured finance and real estate finance. He has extensive experience in securitisations, warehouse financings, loan portfolio sales/acquisitions, sale-leasebacks and credit tenant leases and single property and property portfolio financings. Andy also leads the firm’s practices in Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) and Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) transactions in the UK, Europe and further afield. Andy regularly acts for the issuers and arrangers on covered bond programmes throughout the world, including those for RBS, Nationwide Building Society and Leeds Building Society in the UK, DnB Bank, the Sparebank 1 Alliance and KLP in Norway, OP Mortgage Bank in Finland, Alpha Bank in Greece, the NAB in Australia, BNZ in New Zealand and DBS and UOB in Singapore. He also leads on a number of key client relationships and is one of the firm’s bank sector leaders.

Andrew Hughes

Andrew Hughes has over 15 years experience as a partner at Linklaters handling complex commercial dispute resolution, investigations and crisis management. He has extensive experience of High court and appellate litigation, regulatory and criminal investigations and select committee inquiries. Andrew is currently acting for a number of major banks and corporates on a range of matters spanning across all areas of his practice.

Andy Bruce

Andy leads the firm’s Global Real Estate practice. He has extensive experience in the acquisition, financing, development, letting and disposal of all types of commercial real estate both in the UK and Continental Europe. Work highlights Ranked in the Hall of Fame for Real Estate in Legal 500, Andy has led on many major real estate transactions. Highlights include advising: Development transactions: Lendlease on: its joint venture with Starwood Capital to acquire the £3.5bn Silvertown Quays, London urban renewal project; the £1.9bn Birmingham Smithfield City Centre development covering 17 hectares; and the £2bn ongoing redevelopment of Elephant & Castle, London, comprising 300,000 sqm of new build and mixed use development. Shuaa Group on several projects including its £370m acquisition and subsequent development of New Scotland Yard, London. Investment deals: Ho Bee Land on their £718m acquisition of The Scalpel landmark office building in the City of London. A major pan-European core fund as it expands across Europe. a consortium member on its investment in a €6.4 billion global portfolio of approximately 900 hotels. Lettings: Glencore on the pre-let of their HQ premises in Hanover Square. Sale and leasebacks: several clients on sale and leaseback transactions (including leasehold liability transfers and virtual assignments), including a major financial institution on a large multi-jurisdictional structured sale and leaseback.

Anna Mitchell

Anna is a partner in the antitrust & foreign investment group at Linklaters. She has almost 15 years’ of experience advising clients on a range of complex competition matters, in particular complex UK and EU merger control, UK public takeovers, global foreign direct investment and market studies. More recently, she has been guiding clients through the new EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation. She is well recognised in the market and, in particular, has recently been named in the Global Competition Review “40 under 40” 2023 for Foreign Investment Control, as a “Shining Star” in Antitrust 2023 by W@Competition, as a “Future Leader” in Who’s Who Legal: Competition and as a “Next Generation Partner” in Legal 500’s rankings.

Benedict James

Benedict has broad finance and derivatives experience in the banking and  structured financial products markets, acting mainly for financial institutions but also for major corporates. Benedict particularly specialises in advising financial institutions on the prudential  and structural regulatory landscape, especially the changes resulting from the recent financial and political crises. His practice combines market-leading advisory expertise with a transactional structured-finance offering designed to assist institutions address the challenges of the new regulatory settlement. He advises many of the leading UK, European, US and Asian banks on structural change as well as regulatory capital, liquidity and leverage ratio requirements. He has also advised a number of CCPs across the world, and/or their clearing members, on the structuring of their platforms, particularly from an insolvency and regulatory capital perspective.

Bradley Richardson

Senior AssociateBradley advises on employee remuneration and incentive arrangements and related governance matters.

Bruce Kilpatrick

Partner in the Addleshaw Goddard competition group, based in London, specialising in UK and EC competition and merger control law. Represents clients across a wide variety of sectors, including financial services, IT, industry, transport and retail and has acted on a wide range of cases in the UK and EC. These include: advising clients in recent CMA competition investigations (including construction and e-books); advising clients on recent merger control investigations (including Omnicell/Surgichem and Alliance Medical/IBA Molecular); advising clients in CMA market studies, market investigations, including retail banking, private motor insurance, PPI and NI banking.

Bruce White

Bruce has been a partner at Linklaters since 1995 and heads up Linklaters’ infrastructure practice. With nearly 25 years of experience, his most notable deals include advising on the establishment, governance and financing of the Green Deal Finance Company Limited and the Thames Tideway Tunnel Project. His most recent and current transactions include advising on: the restructuring and refinancing of the Cory riverside EfW business; on a potential financing vehicle for the infrastructure needs of LA Metro; the financing of the two Ferrybridge EfW plants; the termination of the Severn River Crossings concession and numerous refinancings.

Carl Fernandes

Carl Fernandes is a London-based Partner in the global Financial Regulation Group. He has extensive experience in advising banks, broker-dealers, asset managers and private banks on a broad range of complex financial services regulatory issues in both Europe and Asia, including as to the scope of licensing requirements, market conduct requirements and restrictions and appropriate risk management systems and controls. Carl was head of the Asian Financial Regulation Group at Linklaters for five years before returning to London. Carl’s focus will be on assisting clients to navigate and implement the necessary changes to comply with key institutional market reforms in Europe and to defend regulatory enforcement action arising out of conduct in these markets.

Caroline Courtney

Caroline has extensive experience advising corporates, banks, financial institutions and sponsors on a range of complex cross-border financing transactions, including syndicated lending, loan and leasing transactions in the maritime and aviation sectors, acquisition finance, mining and distressed lending. In 2017, Caroline completed an eight-month secondment to the structuring team within the Global Credit Trading division of Deutsche Bank, supporting their special situations (transport, infrastructure and energy), direct lending and credit solutions teams. Caroline practiced in an Irish law firm before joining Linklaters in 2013.

Cecil D Quillen III

Cecil is a London-based US partner who is the leader of the firm’s global US securities and corporate practice. He works on a broad spectrum of securities and finance matters, with a special emphasis on cross-border offerings of high-yield and other covenant-intensive debt securities, and has wide expertise in offerings of debt, equity, regulatory capital and structured securities in established and emerging markets, as well as in liability management transactions and restructurings. Cecil speaks regularly at a variety of professional conferences, is an officer of the Securities Law Committee of the International Bar Association, chairing its Underwriting and Distribution Subcommittee, and sits on the Advisory Committee for Securities Regulation in Europe of the Practising Law Institute.

Charles Jacobs

Charlie is Linklaters' senior partner and chairman and a corporate partner who focuses on public and private M&A and international capital raisings and regulatory and corporate governance standards. He has been the outstanding name in the mining sector worldwide for many decades. He also advises on many of the largest M&A deals in the market, most recently for SAB Miller on its $100 billion takeover by ABI-InBev and Steinhoff's JSE spin-off of its African assets. Charlie is a key boardroom adviser to many of the firm’s largest clients including Glencore, Arcelor Mittal.

Charlotte L Morgan

Charlotte Morgan has a wide range of experience in the energy and infrastructure sector. On the infrastructure side Charlotte leads the team advising Thames Water in respect of the £4.1bn super sewer Thames Tideway project, creating a new structure for investment in infrastructure projects. She continues to advise a consortium of 3i, Siemens and Innisfree on the circa £1.5bn rollingstock procurement for Thameslink. In new power generation she is advising Centrica in respect of its new nuclear joint venture with EdF and 2Co in respect of the first to market carbon capture and storage project in the UK. In transmission she advised Transmission Capital in respect of their successful purchase Offshore Transmission Operator assets at Robin Rigg, Gunfleet Sands, Ormonde and Barrow and in respect of the bids for Lincs, Gwynt y Mor and London Array. She is currently advising National Grid and Elia in respect of the UK-Belgium interconnector.

Chris Staples

Chris is a sector leader for our Energy & Utilities practice and co-head of our Global Commodities practice. He has extensive experience advising clients across multiple sectors including the energy, natural resources and chemicals industries in relation to M&A, joint ventures and sector specific regulatory issues.  His practice focuses primarily on leading a wide range of energy and natural resources transactions and matters.  In addition to M&A and joint ventures, he also advises on commodity sale and purchase transactions, repos and prepays, energy and commodity market regulatory and the allocation and management of environmental and climate change risks including advising on associated regulatory enforcement matters.  He is a market leader in advising on economic and fiscal instruments for climate and environmental protection.

Christian Ahlborn

Christian is a Partner in the Linklaters London competition practice. He specialises in EC competition law and EC state aid control, UK competition law and German competition law, including notifications to EC and national competition authorities.

Christopher Bellamy

Sir Christopher Bellamy QC is the Chairman of the Linklaters Global competition practice. Sir Christopher set up what is now the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) and held the post of president from 1999 to 2007. The CAT hears appeals from regulatory decisions by the OFT and other regulators under the Competition Act 1998 and Articles 101 and 102 of the EU Treaty, appeals under the Communications Act 2003, reviews in relation to merger and market investigations under the Enterprise Act 2002, and certain damages actions. As president, he was responsible for case management, interlocutory and interim applications, chairing the main hearings and preparing and delivering the judgments. Prior to joining the CAT, from 1992 to 1999 Sir Christopher was one of 15 judges of the Court of First Instance (CFI), now the General Court of the EU. He was president of a five-judge chamber from 1996 to 1999. Cases where he participated covered a wide range of EU law including: anti-dumping; competition; freedom of information; free movement of goods; international law; pharmaceutical regulation; trademarks; and state aid. Before becoming a judge at the CFI, Sir Christopher was one of the leading QCs at the competition and EU law Bar in London.

Danelle Le Cren

Danelle is a New York law-qualified senior banking partner who splits her time between London and New York and advises on complex domestic and cross-border finance transactions, including leveraged and acquisition finance and restructuring/workout matters. She has specialist expertise in U.S. and European Term Loan B (TLB) transactions. Danelle also advises on corporate, infrastructure, asset, ECA, project and tax-based finance transactions. Danelle is also the lead U.S. relationship partner for a number of the firm’s major banking clients.Work Highlights:Danelle has led on a number of significant and complex banking transactions. Examples of her experience include advising:  the initial lenders under a US$1.5 billion term loan facility to AT&T to finance the purchase of telecommunications equipment in the United States and Mexico Sibanye Gold Limited on its US$2.7 billion financing of the acquisition of Stillwater Mining Company the administrative agent for the sensor secured lender group under a US$700m loan to Atlas Resources Partners, an oil and gas company operating in the U.S. in connection with a pre-packaged Chapter 11 plan and the related exit facility Steinhoff International Holdings N.V., a South African-based international retailer, on the US$4bn financing of its acquisition of U.S. retailer, Mattress Firm Holding Corp. the administrative agent for the senior secured lender group to Memorial Production Operating LLC, an oil and gas company operating in the US in connection with the restructuring of its US$925 credit facility the administrative agent on the restructuring of US$320m credit agreement for a company that operates major container terminals in the U.S. the administrative agent on a senior secured US$300m covenant-lite TLB and revolving credit facility refinancing for Hudson Products Holding, a U.S.-based manufacturer of heat exchangers the administrative agent on a senior secured US$200m of finance for H.I.G. Capital’s acquisition of ATX Networks, a developer of radio frequency and digital video processing equipment  

Daniel Gendron

Daniel has extensive experience in leveraged finance transactions and financial restructurings, as well as high yield bond issuances. He acts for a variety of lenders (focusing on alternative credit providers) and borrowers (focusing on financial sponsors and their portfolio companies). He has wide-ranging expertise in both new money financings and restructurings, enabling him to deliver comprehensive and commercial advice to his clients.  Daniel is also actively involved with the firm’s initiatives surrounding Canada, including developing and maintaining Canadian client and institutional relationships, as well as providing Canadian companies and institutions with advice regarding outbound investments.Work highlights:Daniel has worked on an array of market-leading matters. These include advising: the mandated lead arrangers on the £1.7bn post-IPO financing of the WorldPay group the anchor investors on the €2.8bn restructuring of French fashion retailer Vivarte, the largest ever leveraged buyout restructuring in France various portfolio companies belonging to Canadian pension funds the coordinating committee of lenders on the £2.3bn restructuring of the hibu (formerly Yell) group Montagu Private Equity on its acquisition and subsequent disposal of each of CAP Automotive and the University of Law GET, the Norwegian cable TV operator, on its refinancing and subsequent sale numerous financial sponsors and alternative credit providers on first lien/second lien and unitranche structures

David Watkins

As head of the firm’s planning team, David has significant experience in all aspects of town planning and development activity. His experience includes negotiating planning permissions for large and complex projects, co-ordinating major public inquiries, and obtaining all planning consents, as well as having in-depth knowledge of compulsory purchase orders, road closure orders and statutory agreements. He is well known for his planning successes involving mixed use developments. Since the early 1990’s David has been heavily involved in advising clients on securing permission to build a series of tall buildings in the City of London, which has changed the face of the City and led to the development of tall buildings in other areas of London.Work highlights David has led on a wide range of the market’s most prominent planning applications. These include advising: Aroland Holdings on the development of a 300m tall building to be known as 1 Undershaft on the site of the Aviva Tower, which, when completed, will be the City of London’s tallest skyscraper Bloomberg on the redevelopment of the three-acre site comprising Bucklersbury House, Walbrook, London to create two new buildings British Land on the redevelopment of 122 Leadenhall Street as a 48-storey, 220m tower in the City of London British Museum on the redevelopment of the northwest corner of the Museum’s Grade I listed Bloomsbury Estate to provide a World Conservation and Exhibition Centre comprising five interconnected glazed pavilions Great Portland Estates on the redevelopment of Rathbone Place, a 2.5-acre site adjacent to Oxford Street to create a new mixed use development Grosvenor and Native Land as joint developers of Neo Bankside (next to Tate Modern Gallery) involving the construction of five new buildings with mixed retail/residential use

Deepak Sitlani

Deepak is a Partner in the derivatves and structured products group. He is a specialist in structuring and documenting documenting of derivative transactions across the full spectrum of asset classes, including OTC equity derivatives, credit derivatives, interest rate and commodity derivatives. Deepak acts for a wide range of entities, including investment banks, corporates, investment managers, share scheme trustees and pension fund trustees. He has also acted for ISDA on Brexit, the EU Benchmark Regulation, the development of fallbacks to IBOR, the posting of Japanese collateral as initial margin, the 2011 Equity Derivatives Definitions and a template emerging markets equity option confirmation. He is a regular speaker on a wide range of derivatives topics as well as at ISDA sponsored conferences.

Duncan Barber

Duncan is a leading practitioner in the insurance sector. He has extensive experience in all types of corporate transactions within the sector, including public and private M&A, reinsurances, distribution arrangements, financings and securitisations. Duncan also advises on insurance regulation including the impact of the Solvency II Directive and the UK leaving the EU. Duncan has led on many of the transformative transactions within the insurance sector throughout the past 25 years, including advising on several of the demutualisations of the 1990s/early 2000s, on with-profits reorganisations by major insurers and on the increased use of longevity reinsurance as an innovative structure to reduce risk on pension fund liabilities. He has also advised on many transfers of life and non-life insurance business. Duncan is responsible for managing the firm’s relationships with several of the firm’s key insurer clients. He led the firm’s insurance sector group for 10 years. Duncan has advised or led on, many of the insurance sector’s highest profile transactions. These include advising:   Lloyds TSB (now Lloyds Banking Group) on its £7bn acquisition of Scottish Widows and the subsequent demutualisation, which, in addition to being a high-profile, high-value transaction, required the negotiation of bespoke protections for Scottish Widows’ policyholders, including negotiating with regulators a series of unprecedented capital reserves   Old Mutual on its takeover of the Swedish-headed global insurer Skandia, which was, at the time, the highest value takeover ever in the insurance sector. This involved preparing a UK prospectus for Old Mutual which, once approved in London, was then passported for use in Sweden and other European jurisdictions and also required obtaining regulatory approval in about 30 jurisdictions   Swiss Re’s “Admin Re” life and pensions business on its acquisition of Guardian Assurance from Cinven and management of Guardian Assurance, which involved detailed due diligence given Swiss Re was buying from private equity sellers, and was signed at a time when there remained uncertainty as to the approach being applied by the regulators to insurers under Solvency II including the subsequent Part VII transfer of the business of Guardian Assurance to ReAssure Limited   Aviva UK Life on the transfer of the whole of the long-term life insurance business of Friends Life Limited and Friends Life and Pensions Limited to Aviva Life & Pensions UK Limited by way of a court-sanctioned insurance business transfer Scheme  the Association of British Insurers and various UK insurers on the implications of, and contingency planning for, Brexit  Generali Group on the disposal of its entire shareholding in Generali Nederland (and its subsidiaries) to ASR Nederland   Duncan is also a contributory author to A Practitioner’s Guide to The FSA Regulation of Insurance.

Eamonn Doran

Eamonn is a Consultant in the Linklaters London competition practice. He specialises in UK and EC merger control and antitrust regulation. Work has included clients from a number of sectors – banking, brewing, general insurance, health insurance, chemicals, publishing, manufacturing – and given him significant experience in dealing with competition authorities in London and Brussels.

Edward Chan

Edward specialises in complex structured financings, particularly those with elements driven by regulatory or tax requirements. Edward also works with various financial institutions on prudential regulatory matters, such as advising on regulatory capital and liquidity requirements, bank ringfencing, and in relation to recovery and resolution planning. Edward regularly advises insurers and pension schemes on the collateralisation and custodial aspects of longevity risk transfers, and has particular experience in both security and title transfer collateralisation arrangements. Edward leads the firm’s initiative on artificial intelligence, and has been advising on the use of technology to enhance and optimise current legal processes.

Edward Smith

Edward is a senior funds partner, and one of the firm’s global investment management sector leaders. He is a specialist in the structuring, marketing and establishment of real estate, private equity and infrastructure funds, carried interest and co-investment schemes and other forms of asset management arrangement, advising both managers and a number of large institutional investors. Edward has considerable knowledge in listed funds, and, working in collaboration with the firm’s equity capital markets lawyers, he advises issuers, underwriters and alternative asset managers on permanent capital vehicles and other listed funds. Edward is knowledgeable in the use of funds techniques and practices into other forms of corporate transaction, such as joint ventures, investment clubs and similar arrangements. Edward has particular knowledge of the implications of the EU Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), and has also been advising a number of clients on the impact of the referendum decision by the UK to leave the European Union, particularly on the issue of passporting rights. Edward was based in Hong Kong between 2009 and 2012, as head of the Funds practice, and he continues to service Asian funds, as well as supervise some aspects of the funds work of the firm’s Hong Kong office from London.Work highlights: Prologis on the structuring and set up of a £1 billion joint venture with CBRE Global Investment Partners for the purpose of acquiring land, developing buildings and operating and holding logistics real estate assets in the UK Prologis its €2.4bn joint venture with Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) Barings (formerly Cornerstone) on the establishment of the Barings European Core Property Fund, utilizing the new Luxembourg special limited partnership structure Eurocastle Investment Limited on its innovative €75m tender offer A leading UK headquartered alternative asset manager on a series of acquisitions of minority interests in asset management businesses; A number of large sovereign investors on a series of investments into leading private equity, real estate and infrastructure funds Mitsubishi Corporation on two fund vehicles to create a global strategic investment alliance, bringing together funds into an alliance

Euan Clarke

Euan is a specialist in insolvency litigation. His practice covers contentious and advisory insolvency and restructuring, banking disputes and fraud and regulatory investigations. He has particular experience advising banks, financial institutions, companies and insolvency practitioners in relation to contentious issues arising from complex restructuring, insolvency and corporate distress situations, especially those with a cross-border element. Euan is also a past-President of the Insolvency Lawyers’ Association.Euan was one of the core group of partners who has been advising the administrators of the Lehman Brothers companies in the UK, since day one. Other significant cases include Toys r Us, Enron, MG Rover, Beaufort Securities and Irish Bank Resolution.Recent cases include acting for Nero Holdings Limited, on its recent CVA, including defending a challenge brought by certain landlord creditors, and Intu Properties advising on the restructuring and subsequent insolvency of the Intu group of companies.

Fiona Hobbs

Fiona is a leading energy and infrastructure specialist. Recent deals include advising: ENI on the unitisation of Areas 1 and 4, Mozambique, the Lenders (JBIC, NEXI, AfDB, ECIC and commercial lenders) on the $2.4b financing of the Nacala pit to port railway in Malawi and Mozambique, HS1 on the renegotiation of its power supply arrangements and HS1’s shareholders on the sale of HS1. Fiona’s other key clients include KNOC and The Department of Transport.

Georgina Kon

Specialise in advising both public and private sector clients on complex domestic and international IT, outsourcing and information governance matters (including data privacy and freedom of information matters). Shortlisted for Legal Advisor of the Year 2016 by the National Outsourcing Association.

Greg Reid

Over 25 years’ experience of International Commercial Arbitration and Litigation, including conduct as counsel of numerous arbitrations under the ICC, LCIA, UNCITRAL and ICSID rules and ad hoc proceedings. Particular expertise in the areas of Energy and Infrastructure Projects. Co-author of the Linklaters Dispute Toolkit and author of numerous articles on arbitration topics and a regular speaker at arbitration conferences.

Harry Eddis

Harry has long-standing expertise in financial markets regulation, and regularly advises banks, broker-dealers, investment managers and other financial services institutions on all issues related to their regulated status. In addition, he offers guidance on perimeter issues, such as authorisation requirements, market abuse and market conduct requirements, as well as wholesale market infrastructure. Recently, Harry has been advising on MiFID II and Brexit issues for a broad range of financial service institutions as well as industry bodies. Harry is a market-leading expert on clearing platforms, advising both banks and Central Clearing Counterparties (CCPs) on a number of projects involving the structure of clearing arrangements across a wide range of product types, including credit default swaps (CDSs), IRS, commodities and foreign exchange (FX) products. Harry has leveraged his regulatory and market expertise over the years in relation to FinTech, advising BrokerTec and SwapsWire on the establishment of electronic trading and post-trade platforms. Harry continues to be a leader in this field, currently advising a consortium of banks on FinTech issues and being a regular speaker at FinTech events. Harry spent more than four years with a major investment bank, covering equity derivatives, advising on the structuring and distribution of derivative products. This experience gave Harry particular insight into the way in which financial institutions operate and a deep understanding of complex financial instruments.Work highlights: Harry has an extensive financial regulatory practice. The breadth of his practice includes advising, among others: Regulatory change: advising on the implications of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID2). Other recent matters have included advising on market conduct, the foreign exchange (FX) remediation programme, the senior managers regime (SMR), the impact of the senior management arrangements, systems and controls (SYSC) regime and Client Assets and Money (CASS) implementation New structures: advising on the creation and structuring of trading and clearing platforms, including NASDAQ, OTCDeriv and a consortium in the process of setting up a precious metals exchange and clearing platform Pre-contentious regulatory: advising on various FX reviews and remediation and market conduct investigations, including advising major banks on their policies and procedures to comply with the senior managers function (SMF) Contentious regulatory: advising a number of major banks on FX manipulation investigations and market abuse and conduct reviews, as well as carrying out “Shadow S166” reviews alongside regulators Financial sector corporate activity: advising on the financial regulatory aspects of IPOs and other corporate transactions

Iain Wagstaff

Iain is a partner in the corporate practice who specialises in public and private mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, secondary capital raisings and joint ventures. He acts for corporates, financial sponsors and investment banks. He has completed two client secondments at leading investment banks. Iain’s recent experience includes advising BC Partners and Pollen Street Capital on their acquisition of Shawbrook, Stonegate on its offer for Revolution Bars, Hutchison on its potential £9.5 billion acquisition of O2 and Three’s acquisition of UK Broadband, Bill Kenwright and others on the sale of Everton Football Club to Farhad Mosiri, Centrica on the acquisition of ENER-G, Siemens on the £1.742bn acquisition of the international automated rail business of Invensys plc and the £950 million acquisition of Rolls Royce’s energy business; GDF SUEZ on its €20.2bn reverse takeover of International Power plc and subsequent €9.5bn recommended cash offer for the minority stake; GDF SUEZ on the disposal of 30% of its upstream oil and gas business to China Investment Corporation and the disposal of its North Sea assets to Total; Fresnillo on its demerger, redomicile and listing on the London Stock Exchange; initial public offerings for Investec, Biffa, Aldermore, CMC Markets, Card Factory, Manx Telecom and Just Eat; Capital Shopping Centres on the acquisition of the Trafford Centre and defence of hostile approach from Simon Property Group; and on secondary capital raisings including those by British Land, intu Properties, Investec and Meggitt.

Ian Hunter

Ian is a partner in the Linklaters corporate department who focuses on public and private M&A, international capital raisings and joint ventures. He advises a number of the firm's major clients in the mining sector worldwide, and also advises professional services firms and networks on structure and governance. Ian is a relationship partner for a number of the firm's key mining clients, including Glencore, KAZ Minerals, and Endeavour Mining.

Ian Andrews

Ian Co-heads the Infrastructure & transport sector at Linklaters. He has been involved with the infrastructure practice for over 25 years and has advised sponsors and funders on infrastructure financings and acquisitions in almost every country in Europe. His recent experience includes advising Borealis Infrastructure and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) on the sale of HS1 and the original £2.1 billion purchase; AIMCO, Borealis Infrastructure, Ontario Teachers and Wren House on their successful acquisition of London City Airport (European M&A deal of the year, Infrastructure Journal Awards 2017); funders on the purchase of National grid’s UK gas distribution business (NGGD) (the biggest ever energy infrastructure deal); the refinancing of Budapest Airport’s debt package and bond financing following the successful €1.3bn refinancing three years ago, on which Ian also advised (European airport deal of the year, PFI Awards 2015); the private shareholders on the extension of the concession for Athens Airport and the potential further privatisation by the Greek State; funders on the acquisition by Chinese investors of Urbaser SA in Spain; Public Sector Pensions (PSP) on their acquisition of Hochtief Airport, with interests in Athens, Budapest, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Sydney and Tirana Airports; Borealis Infrastructure, AP1, AP3 and Folksam on their €6.6bn acquisition of Fortum Distribution in Sweden (now Ellevio), the largest ever Nordic infrastructure acquisition (European M&A deal of the year, Project Finance International Awards 2015) and Allianz and Borealis Infrastructure on acquisition of Net4Gas.

Ian Karet

Ian specializes in intellectual property and technology and covers commercial work and disputes. He is a qualified arbitrator and mediator. Significant cases include Merck v Merck, ICC royalty arbitration, Aerotel v Telco, Actavis v Merck, 32Red v William Hill and Tate & Lyle v Roquette. He is a solicitor advocate and a qualified arbitrator and mediator.

Ian Callaghan

Ian advises corporates, investment banks and alternative credit providers on public and private acquisition financings, cross-border syndicated lending, margin lending, fund financing arrangements and other structured financings. Ian spent eight months on secondment to BNP Paribas’ loan syndication and trading team from 2009 to 2010 and eight months on secondment to Alcentra from 2013 to 2014, assisting their Collateralised Loan Obligation (CLO), direct lending and special situations teams.

Ildar Bagautdinov

Counsel

James Wootton

James is a corporate partner based in London and is Global Co-Head of our Equities practice and advises companies, financial institutions and funds on a wide range of corporate, M&A and capital markets matters. He specialises in particular in equity capital markets transactions and  in recent years has advised Wise on its London direct listing, Alphawave IP, Allied Irish Banks, TSB Banking Group and Countryside Properties, among others, on their London IPOs, and the underwriters on the IPOs of Oxford Nanopore Technologies,  Clydesdale & Yorkshire Banks, Royal Mail and ConvaTec. He also operates at the forefront of regulatory developments across the equity capital markets space and regularly advises banking industry groups in this area.

James Martin

James advises arrangers, corporates and sponsors on all areas of bank lending, including global loans, syndicated finance, margin loans (often connected with IPOs) and restructuring across Europe and the emerging markets. Until his return to the firm’s London office in 2013, James led the firm’s Middle East banking practice, and he continues to lead high-profile, Middle East-related transactions. James helped develop lending structures involving a combination of Islamic and conventional finance and pioneered transactions involving jumbo pre-IPO syndicated margin loans and hybrid fund financings using proxies for LTVs.  

James Inglis

James is a corporate partner based in the London office, and is a specialist in public and private M&A and equity capital markets transactions. He is a relationship partner for a number of clients, including Rio Tinto, Novartis, Jardine Matheson, United Technologies Corporation, Takeda and Kier Group. He also works extensively with investment banks, including Credit Suisse, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley.

Jason Manketo

Global Chair of Equities.  Advises clients on the life cycle of their equity capital markets activities, from early-stage private placements through to IPOs and secondary market capital raisings, including accelerated bookbuildings and rights issues, as well as cross-border M&A and debt capital market transactions. He advises across multiple sectors, including fintech, financial services and consumer sectors, and markets, including the UK, MENA and Benelux region. He is also a member of the firm’s cross-practice ESG team, with a particular focus on ESG disclosure and governance issues, and has been at the forefront of the development of the European SPAC market, advising sponsors and underwriters in connection with SPAC IPO and de-SPAC transactions on the Amsterdam and London stock exchanges.

Jo Windsor

Specialist in International and Domestic Corporate Recovery and Insolvency and in banking transactions. Experience includes acting for borrowers and lenders in English, US, Norwegian, Slovak, Swiss, French, Thai and Indonesian restructurings and acting for both insolvency practitioners and creditors in administrations, receiverships and liquidations. Experience in banking includes acting for both lenders and borrowers in syndicated facilities and structured financings.

John Pickett

John is a senior Energy & Infrastructure lawyer and is one of the firm’s Energy sector leaders. He has a particular focus on the power and renewables sector and leads Linklaters’ renewables practice, advising on a wide range of financing, M&A and regulatory mandates. Key roles include advising on most of the UK’s offshore windfarms including Lincs, Beatrice, Race Bank, Dudgeon and Triton Knoll; advising the South African Government on the design and implementation of their renewables procurement programme and advising the UK National Grid on its role as the Delivery Body for EMR, including leading the team drafting the Capacity Market Rules.

Jonathan De Lance-holmes

Jonathan is a senior partner in the firm’s Investment Management group, and is widely acknowledged for his experience in both UK and international private funds, including private equity, infrastructure, real estate and hedge funds. Jonathan advises sponsors and major international investors, including major private equity and other alternative equity houses and sovereign wealth funds, on structuring, spin-off, fundraising, transactions and products. He also counsels managers on all governance and regulation aspects arising out of the creation and operation of funds. Jonathan has led on many of the market’s most significant funds’ transactions. His experience includes advising: SoftBank Group Corp on its US$100bn SoftBank Vision Fund, which will be the largest private equity-style fund ever established, investing globally in the technology sector Aermont Capital LLP (formerly PW Real Assets LLP) on the establishment of their latest €1.5bn European real estate fund  BlackRock on their European and Asian real estate private funds Numerous manager groups and financial institutions on establishment and spin-offs of private equity, infrastructure and hedge fund managers, including EMSO, Squarepoint, InfraRed and Terra Firma Cinven on their €5 billion Fifth Fund fundraise BC Partners and Terra Firma on a number of large-scale private equity fundraisings a major Asian sovereign wealth fund on a variety of substantial and sponsor investor commitments to US and European private equity and infrastructure funds and on its investment in the GP of a major pan-European private equity house and its funds

Kanyaka Ramamurthi

Kanyaka is a corporate partner based in London who advises on a wide range of corporate and commercial matters across different sectors but with a focus on the insurance sector. She has a broad base of experience including public and private M&A, equities, general corporate advisory and, more recently, transactional and advisory work in the insurance sector, including Part VII insurance business transfers and Solvency II expertise.  Kanyaka has spent time in the firm’s Sao Paulo and Tokyo offices as well as on secondment to Vodafone and Aviva. Recent experience includes advising: AXA on the sale of its UK Life & Savings businesses which included 3 separate sales to the Phoenix Group, Standard Life and LCCG; Aviva on its corporate reorganisation following its acquisition of Friends Life, including on two Part VII transfers (confidential), and on Solvency II matters; Britvic on its successful defence against a takeover bid by AG Barr, and on a cash placing to fund an acquisition; various investors on the sale of House of Fraser to Sanpower; Aviva on its disposal of its Turkish non-life business to a private equity consortium and the sale of Aviva Investors Central European Properties Sarl and its subsidiaries to Lone Star Capital Investments Sarl (confidential); AXA on its partnership with the Africa Internet Group.

Katie Coltart

Katie is a patent litigation specialist with a wealth of experience across the life sciences, telecoms and technology sectors. Katie is well-versed in dealing with major cross-border matters requiring significant coordination across multiple forums, and with a degree in chemistry and biology she is well-placed to advise on highly technical subject matters. Katie has worked on the litigation of patents across a broad spectrum of technological subject matters, including those relating to antibody and other protein biologics, biosimilars, biological product development and screening platforms, medical devices, medical diagnostics and sequencing technologies, 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G telecommunications, connected cars, consumer products and FRAND/SEP licensing.

Mark Blyth

Mark heads Linklaters’ Pensions Disputes practice. He is acknowledged as one of the leading UK pensions disputes lawyers and advises employers, trustees, insurers and professional services firms on the most complex, high-value and novel pensions disputes with the Pensions Regulator and before the Courts. These typically concern scheme funding, re-structuring, benefit design, construction of scheme rules, rectification and professional negligence.

Mark O'Neill

Mark is a highly experienced banking lawyer and one of the market’s most renowned practitioners in real estate finance. Mark acts for bank and non-bank lenders and borrowers on all types of real estate finance transactions. The range of transactions on which he advises include investment and development financing, senior and mezzanine financing and commercial mortgage-backed securitisations (CMBS),  financing for all property types (office, retail, residential, warehouse, hotel and leisure) and loan portfolios. He has advised on financings in the UK, Europe and elsewhere.Work highlights:Mark has advised on many of the market’s most significant property financings. These include advising: various banks on the development financing of many of the office towers at Canary Wharf in London, including 25 Canada Square, 25 Bank Street and 25 Churchill Place RBS and other banks on the development financing for the Grosvenor Group of a retail-led development of the 42-acre Liverpool One site in central Liverpool Deutsche Bank on the first German CMBS (Centro Oberhausen Shopping Centre) and for Eurohypo on the first Irish CMBS (a portfolio of Dublin offices) GE Capital on the acquisition of the Bradford & Bingley real estate loan portfolio a leading investment bank  on the financing of a portfolio of European warehouses for ProLogis a syndicate of banks on the financing of the Santander headquarters complex outside Madrid– one of the largest single asset REF  financings in Europe

Marly Didizian

Marly specialises in all types of global sourcing, supply chain and technology arrangements. She has particular expertise in complex business carve-outs and works across sectors including healthcare, consumer, financial sponsors, media, telecoms, financial services and data-driven businesses. She is also the global co-head of the firm’s Healthcare and Life Sciences sector. Marly supports clients throughout the full lifecycle of their most important transformations and projects, from initial structuring and procurement to contentious and non-contentious renegotiations and terminations. Her deals often involve cutting-edge uses of technology, data and supply chain, often within complex regulatory frameworks. She is also experienced in media and broadcasting transactions and related regulation, having been seconded to both the BBC and Ofcom. Marly is ranked in MergerLinks’ top 5 leading female M&A lawyers in EMEA specialising in commercial carve-outs, and was voted one of the Hot 100 Lawyers by The Lawyer for her sourcing work.

Martin Elliott

Martin is a senior real estate partner who advises on commercial property work of all types He has particular knowledge of development-related work for both developers and investors, including transactions involving the development and acquisition of designer outlet centres. Martin also has considerable experience of real estate transactions involving shopping centre and retail, office and mixed use development. Additionally, Martin advises on corporate transactions involving real estate assets, together with corporate flotations, acquisitions, disposals and joint ventures.Work Highlights: Martin has led on many of the market’s major commercial real estate deals. Highlights include advising: Lend Lease on the £696m sale of its 30% interest in the Bluewater Shopping Centre to Land Securities Lend Lease on the sale of its interest in the Chapelfield Shopping Centre in Norwich to Capital Shopping Centres for £260m The Leadenhall Building EC3 (The “Cheesegrater”) - development and key letting of major parts of the building development and letting of premises 1- 8 Merry Hill and sale, in Brierley Hill near Dudley, West Midlands Printworks Manchester – development, letting and sale of innovative City Centre leisure development

Martyn Hopper

Martyn advises financial institutions on regulatory matters. Prior to returning to private practice in 2004 he spent over nine years working as a senior lawyer at the UK Financial Services Authority, latterly as Head of Department in the Enforcement Division. He has extensive experience advising investment banks, retail banks, insurers, asset managers and listed companies on regulatory compliance problems. He has advised on “crisis management” on discovery of major compliance failures,  conducted numerous internal investigations and represented clients in regulatory investigations, enforcement actions and related civil litigation across the financial services sector. His client work has included some of the highest profile cases brought by the regulators over the past decade and has involved him regularly representing clients before regulators, tribunals and the higher courts (including applications for judicial review of regulators). He has extensive experience of managing multi-jurisdictional regulatory issues and investigations  touching Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific. Martyn also regularly advises clients on compliance risk management issues. His areas of particular interest and experience include insider dealing and market manipulation, unauthorised trading incidents, corporate disclosure issues, governance and risk control in financial institutions, senior management responsibilities, management of conflicts of interest, suitability of financial products and portfolio management, financial promotions, fair treatment of customers and other conduct of business standards in respect of investment, banking and insurance products. Martyn’s recent clients have included UBS, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, Santander, Bradford & Bingley, Zurich, Prudential, Capita Financial and a number of asset management firms.  Recent significant client matters on which he worked have included advising and representing UBS in relation to the Adoboli US$2.3billion unauthorised trading incident, representing UBS in the FSA’s Upper Tribunal proceedings against senior manager John Pottage and acting for the applicant in the judicial review of the FSA in R v FSA on the application of C. He has had a significant role advising clients on most of the major regulatory investigations and inquiries resulting from the banking crisis.

Matthew Bland

Matthew is a corporate partner based in the London office. He advises on a wide range of corporate, corporate finance and commercial matters across various sectors but with a focus on the bank and financial institutions and pharmaceuticals sector. His main areas of practice include domestic and international mergers and acquisitions (both private and public), where he has particular experience leading complex and cross-border transactions, corporate restructurings and joint ventures, as well as domestic and international initial public offerings, rights issues and other equity capital markets transactions. Key clients include Lloyds Banking Group, TSB, Rothesay Life, Goldman Sachs, Julius Baer, Novartis, Spirent Communications and Thames Water.

Matthew Keogh

Matt is the Global Head of Linklaters’ Investment Management Group. He advises on all aspects of private institutional investment products and transactions. Matt acts for both sponsors and investors and his experience covers the structuring and management of funds and managed accounts investing in illiquid assets, particularly in real estate, private equity and credit. He also has experience in private equity style joint ventures and equity syndication, fund equity and debt financing (acting for both sponsors and banks), M&A related to independent and captive investment operations and secondary disposals of fund interests.Work highlights:Matt has led on a wide range of complex investment fund transactions. These include advising: Macquarie Bank on the raising of a number of infrastructure debt funds Deutsche Bank Private Equity on a range of private equity secondaries and private equity funds a large Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund on the disposal of a US$2bn portfolio of private equity interests CBRE on its latest value add European real estate fund, Alinda on the European sleeve of its latest infrastructure fund, Alcentra, the European leader in leveraged loans, on the establishment of the Alcentra Special Situations Fund; an international investment bank on the establishment of its real estate and private markets investment clubs Aviva Investors Global Services Limited on the raising of a European alternative energy fund and a Tokyo property fund a range of cornerstone investors from North America and the Middle East on their investment into market leading European private equity and credit funds and a large middle eastern sovereign wealth fund on the disposition of a US$2bn portfolio of private equity interests.

Michael Honan

Michael is a corporate partner who focuses on public and private M&A, joint ventures, reorganisations and corporate governance. Michael is a central member of Linklaters’ infrastructure M&A team and is also a key adviser to a number of Linklaters’ most important multinational corporate clients, in particular in the consumer sector. He has advised on a number of high profile M&A deals in the market, for example the multi-billion pound disposal of High Speed 1 by OMERS Infrastructure and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the disposal by Nestlé of its global ice cream business.

Michael Cutting

Michael is a partner in the Competition/Antitrust practice, based in London.  He has significant experience of both competition and regulatory law in the UK and across Europe. He also has considerable experience of the application of competition law in the energy, utilities, food & beverages, leisure and transport sectors and works with his clients to guide them through complex merger control, behavioural and other regulatory issues. Michael was Global Head of the Linklaters Competition/Antitrust practice from 2011 to 2015 and lead the London Competition/Antitrust group from 2004 to 2009.  He is co-chair of the Joint Working Party on Competition Law of the Law Society and Bar Council.

Michael Voisin

Michael is Global Head of Capital Markets and a partner in the Derivatives and Structured Products Group in London. Michael specialises in sophisticated financial products, including securitised, exchange traded and OTC derivatives, repackagings, investment fund products and financing, CDOs, and note and warrant programmes . Recent experience includes derivatives clearing, regulation and regulatory capital treatment (including the FIA CCP Risk Review), benchmarks , longevity derivatives, acting for the UK administrators of Lehman Brothers, ISDA on the drafting of the 2011 Equity Derivatives Definitions and Brexit and Eurozone matters.

Michael Bennett

Michael is the firm’s Global Head of Dispute Resolution and has over 20 years’ experience in managing legal, regulatory, political and reputational risk in commercially sensitive situations and handling the related disputes. He has been based in London, New York and Asia and focuses particularly on all contentious aspects of large scale M&A and advising clients on various aspects of crisis management, helping navigate potential civil and criminal exposure alongside regulatory, parliamentary and media sensitivity (usually with a cross-border dimension). He has significant experience advising on fraud investigations and corruption risk, dealing with the SFO and other international regulatory bodies.

Mike Bienenfeld

Mike is a US corporate and capital markets partner based in London. His practice focusses on equity and debt capital markets, public M&A and SEC advisory work. He is the co-head of the SEC compliance function at Linklaters, and established the firm’s SEC Transactions and Compliance Group. Mike is SEC counsel to some of the largest international companies listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ, and has significant experience advising on listings and IPOs on the major stock exchanges across the US, Europe and South Africa, event-driven rights issues and equity placings, private capital raising and debt capital markets transactions.

Nadia Swann

Nadia Swann is one of the senior partners in Linklaters’ Financial Regulation Group. She has over 20 years experience advising on all aspects of financial services regulation for investment banks, funds, corporates and insurers including general regulatory structuring advice and documentation, Brexit, MiFID II, broker-dealing, M&A, regulatory corporate governance and policy management, legal risk and regulatory themed reviews, board effectiveness reviews, regulatory culture reviews, senior management training including preparation of CEOs and non-executive directors for PRA/FCA registration interviews, regulatory investigations and enforcement, financial promotion, market abuse, money laundering, bribery act issues, sanctions and suspicious activity reporting. She is listed as a leading individual in Chambers who cite her "enviable experience advising on a wide range of regulatory and compliance matters" and "her skill in handling MiFID II developments and preparing executive and senior managers". She has been ranked in the FN100 Most Influential Women in Finance for the fifth consecutive year. She is also the Deputy Chair of Linklaters' Partner Election Committee.

Narayan Iyer

Narayan is a finance partner and one of the Indian market’s leading international lawyers. He is head of the firm’s India practice, which advises corporates and financial institutions on outbound and inbound investments, projects and financings.  Narayan has a broad finance practise, acting for major banks, financial sponsors and corporates. He has particular expertise in acquisition and structured financings, loan portfolio acquisitions and financings, real estate financings and inbound and outbound transactions. He has significant experience in the energy and infrastructure sectors.  Between 2010 and 2013, Narayan was a partner of TT&A, Linklaters’ best friend law firm in India. Prior to that, he was based in Linklaters’ office in Singapore having started his career as a trainee with Linklaters in London.Work highlights:Narayan has acted on many high-profile finance deals. These include advising: Standard Chartered Bank on the sale of a portfolio of loans in India, the first in a series of similar deals in India as part of the government’s directive to banks to focus on the robustness of their balance sheets the lending and underwriting banks on the refinancing of US$6.9bn worth of debt uninsured by the Tata Corus Group Brookfield Property Partners on the acquisition and financing of Unitech’s Indian real estate portfolio Enron on the US$3bn Dhabol power project (since renamed Ratnagiri Gas and Power), the first ever inward investment into the India power sector the sponsor and borrowers on the Sakhalin LNG project, the world’s largest integrated oil and gas project and the largest LNG financing in Russia the banks on financing and reorganising Essar Oil’s debt portfolio

Nemone Franks

Advises on complex, high-value commercial contracts for the exploitation of intellectual property rights, including IP licensing, franchising, and R&D arrangements, and on the treatment of intellectual property rights in the context of corporate and finance transactions, in particular cross-border M&A with complex IP and IT separation issues across a broad range of industries and sectors and Private Equity IP-rich transactions. Advises on strategies for protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights and on trade mark, design right, copyright and passing off disputes

Nicholas Le Masurier

Nick specialises in restructuring, insolvency and special situations. He has over 20 years’ experience advising stakeholders on a broad range of restructuring, insolvency and other matters involving financial distress, including acting for senior, second lien and mezzanine creditors, bondholders, distressed and special situation investors and distressed corporates. He has a particular focus on complex multi-jurisdictional financial restructurings, schemes of arrangement, restructuring plans, security enforcement exercises and insolvencies.

Nick Syson

Nick is a market-leading leveraged finance specialist. He acted on his first leveraged buyout in 1988, he set up the firm’s leveraged finance practice in 2001 with Gideon Moore and he was Co-Head of the Leveraged Finance Practice until 2016. Nick was elected by the Partners to the firm’s supervisory board for consecutive terms and he remains on the firm’s audit committee. He is also the firm’s Health and Wellbeing Partner. Within his practice, he advises arranging banks on financial sponsor-backed leveraged finance transactions and coordinating bank and steering committees on debt restructurings. He also advises on bank/bond financings. Nick has been involved in a number of pioneering developments in the leveraged finance sector, most recently acting for the underwriters on the financings for both the acquisition of Coty and the bid for MasMovil, being the financing transactions that reopened the European leveraged loan market post Covid19 and, prior to that, on a number of transactions that established and evolved the European cov-lite leveraged loan product. He has also acted on some of the early “Opco/Propco” financings (in which the finance is divided between operating companies and property-owning businesses), regulatory life insurance arbitrage transactions, transactions involving hedging uneven cashflows, infrastructure acquisition financings and numerous debt restructuring transactions. Nick was based in Singapore for two years where he focused on, and developed his knowledge of, regional debt restructuring.

Nigel Jones

Nigel helps organisations and individuals realise their potential. He is a scientist turned lawyer, with over 30 years’ experience of advising on a broad range of contentious and non-contentious IP-related projects. They include assisting pharmaceutical companies to resolve complex international patent disputes and working with companies, PE houses and investment banks on M&A, JV, collaboration and finance transactions. He also has qualifications and experience in mediation and business coaching, and holds a number of advisory board and NED/trustee roles. He is also a co-founder, and current chair, of the City Mental Health Alliance.

Nikunj Kiri

Nik is a partner in the Financial Regulation Group in London.  He has extensive experience of advising banks, broker-dealers, insurers, asset managers, wealth management firms and listed companies on regulatory and compliance matters, with a particular focus on contentious regulatory and compliance risk management issues.  Nik’s contentious regulatory experience includes conducting internal investigations and reviews following the discovery of suspected compliance failures; assisting clients in managing section 166 skilled persons’ reviews; advising clients in relation to managing communications with regulators; representing clients in FSA/FCA investigations and enforcement proceedings (including representing clients before the Regulatory Decisions Committee, in the Upper Tribunal and in the higher courts); advising clients in relation to the development and implementation of past business reviews and redress/remediation programmes; and assisting clients in managing civil litigation risks arising out of regulatory failings. Nik also regularly advises clients on compliance risk management issues, including advice on the practical implications of regulation for their business practices and governance arrangements, and strategies for mitigating and managing regulatory and conduct risks.  Nik’s work in this area covers a diverse range of topics, from senior management responsibility, governance and risk management frameworks to conflicts of interest, insider dealing, market abuse, client money, fair treatment of customers, complaint handling and other conduct of business issues. Nik also regularly advises listed companies, corporate brokers and sponsors in relation to the disclosure and control of inside information, the LR8 sponsor regime and other Listing Rule/DTR compliance matters.

Olga Petrovic

Olga is Head of the firm’s Asset Finance practice and co-head of the Transportation sector group. She has extensive experience in transactions involving a range of aviation and maritime assets, including loan and lease financings, ECA-backed debt, asset and corporate acquisitions and joint ventures, and restructuring and enforcement. Olga also advises on loan portfolio transactions, general banking and borrowing base / asset based lending transactions.  

Oliver Sceales

Oliver brings significant experience in structuring and executing sponsor-backed leveraged acquisition finance transactions in the European market. Oliver’s particular focus is acting for financial sponsors on leveraged buy-outs across the capital structure. Oliver is the co-head of Linklaters’ Leveraged Finance practice. He has been a partner since 2016 and joined Linklaters’ banking team in 2006. Before joining the firm, Oliver worked for Allens, Linklaters’ integrated alliance partner in Australia.

Oliver Edwards

Oliver has particular expertise in margin lending and structured facilities and has worked on complex margin loans for many different financial institutions, as well as advising several banks on liquidity financings to other financial institutions. Oliver spent time on secondment working in the legal departments of two leading global financial institutions (Barclays in 2005 and J.P. Morgan in 2010), that provided him with invaluable experience of their internal operations and a deep understanding of their requirements of external lawyers. In addition to his practice role, Oliver is also Linklaters’ UK Diversity Partner.  

Owen Clay

Owen leads one of the firm’s fours corporate M&A groups in London and was co-head of Linklaters’ energy sector for seven years. Owen has a broad practice including corporate finance, public and private mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, demergers and issues of compliance and corporate governance. Owen manages the firm’s relationship with Centrica, Britvic, Mitie Group, Genel Energy and Arcadia. Over the years, Owen has done a lot of work for the firm’s largest corporate clients, including BP, BAE Systems, Glencore and Anglo American. Experience includes acting for Glencore in relation to its acquisition of shares in Rosneft, acting for Sir Philip Green in relation to the sale and settlement of the BHS pensions dispute with the Pensions Regulator, acting for Home Retail Group in relation to its takeover by J Sainsbury, acting for Britvic on its successful defence against a proposed takeover by AG Barr, advising BAE Systems in relation to the formation and restructuring of the MBDA joint venture, advising Korean National Oil Corporation on its successful hostile takeover of Dana Petroleum, advising Centrica on its £2.2 bn rights issue to fund the formation of its nuclear joint venture with EDF and advising BP in relation to the takeover of Burmah Castrol and the sale of Innovene to Ineos.

Pam Shores

Global Co-Head of Equity Capital Markets. Advises clients on the life cycle of their equity capital markets activities, from early stage fundraising through to IPOs and secondary market capital raisings, including placings and rights issues, as well as on debt capital markets transactions. She has led the teams on many of the firm’s most complex cross-border capital markets transactions and has experience across many industry sectors.

Patrick Plant

As a senior partner in the firm’s Real Estate Department, Patrick has considerable experience in real estate transactions, advising investors, developers, lenders and tenants on all aspects of commercial real estate in the UK. Patrick has advised on numerous international real estate projects on behalf of listed real estate companies, sovereign wealth funds and investment banks in Asia, the Middle East and Continental Europe. Patrick also has specialist expertise in hotel and leisure properties, including management and franchise agreements. Patrick was seconded to the firm’s Hong Kong and Frankfurt offices, and has worked in Australia as a corporate lawyer for a major Australian law firm. Work highlights Throughout his career, Patrick has led on many of the market’s major commercial real estate transactions. Highlights include advising: a major US corporate on the acquisition and the development of an iconic new European HQ in London Ramsbury on the acquisition of the Debenhams store, Oxford Street, and the former Dickins & Jones building on Regent Street, London a major European bank on the development of its new London HQ a major US investment bank on the development of its new European HQ InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) on the sale and manage back of a portfolio of Holiday Inn hotels in the UK, the market’s first major sale and manage back transaction HSBC on its sale and leaseback at Canary Wharf the Safra family on its acquisition of Plantation Place, London Allied London on the development, leasing and subsequent investment sales at Spinningfields, Manchester Linklaters on its own UK and global premises strategy

Paul Joseph

Paul advises on the full range of both contentious and non-contentious intellectual property matters. His contentious work has included the litigation and arbitration of copyright, patent, trade mark, data, confidential information and IP licence disputes. On the non-contentious side, he advises on global IP licensing, commercialisation and joint venture arrangements, IP structuring and intellectual property issues arising in the context of M&A, joint ventures, and IPOs. He has extensive technology, FinTech, media and retail sector experience.

Pauline Ashall

Partner in the firm’s derivatives and structured products group. Acts for banks, other financial intermediaries and end-users in relation to derivatives, whether in securitised or OTC form, and relating to a wide range of underlying asset classes, including funds, equities and commodities. She also advises on financial regulatory issues, OTC clearing, exchange-traded derivatives, stocklending, repos, global custody, prime brokerage and collateral management. She acted for the administrators of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) from 2008 – 2015 in relation to Lehman’s prime brokerage business. 

Peter Bevan

Peter is Global Head of Linklaters’ Financial Regulation Group and is one of the firm’s global Investment Managers sector leaders. Peter has developed close working relationships with the firm’s banking and investment management clients. His practice includes all aspects of financial markets regulatory advice for broker-dealers and investment banks. Peter advises investment managers, private banks, hedge funds and private equity funds on regulatory issues affecting them. He also advises clients on regulatory investigations into areas such as market conduct, client money compliance and transaction reporting failures. Peter has particular experience of new product development and marketing, trading issues such as market abuse and regulatory structuring advice. Earlier in his career, Peter was seconded to both Bankers Trust and Nomura, advising and assisting with the establishment of their respective securities financing businesses.Work highlights:Peter has developed a wide-ranging financial regulatory practice. The breadth of his practice includes, advising on, amongst others: Regulatory change: advising numerous banks and investment firms on the implementation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MIFID2) and other regulatory reform initiatives New structures: advising on the creation and structuring of trading and clearing platforms, both internal crossing systems operated by firms and new market entrants including Turquoise (an equities trading platform created by nine major investment banks) and ForexClear, an FX clearing platform operated by LCH.Clearnet (acting for a consortium of clearing banks) Cross-border work: advising international banks on their European structures, to comply with regularly changing European regulations affecting financial institutions, including Brexit Contentious regulatory: advising clients on both LIBOR and FX manipulation investigations, and before that leading the team advising Citi in the first multi-jurisdictional manipulation case, involving Euro sovereign bond trading, which involved negotiating with eight different regulators Financial sector corporate activity: advising RBS on its ongoing structural reorganisation that has involved sales of businesses, including Worldpay, and the ring-fencing of its investment and retail banking operations 

Rachel Barrett

Rachel leads the Firm’s global ESG practice. She has deep expertise and exceptional breadth of experience advising on existing and incoming ESG regulation and soft law standards, ESG strategy and disclosures, sustainable finance products and frameworks, ESG governance and risk management and on stakeholder activism, litigation risk and crisis management. Recently she has been recognised in the Fifty Most Influential in Sustainable Finance 2023 list by Financial News, as the go-to advisor on ESG matters by The Lawyer Hot 100 list as well as Next Generation Partner in the Environment and Corporate Governance by Legal 500.

Rebecca Jarvis

Rebecca is the Global Co-Head of Banking at Linklaters and a partner in the Restructuring and Insolvency team, comprising specialists throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia and handling the world's most challenging and significant domestic and cross-border assignments. Rebecca advises creditors, (including banks and other financial investors and steering committees) insolvency office holders, and corporate debtors and their directors in all aspects of non-contentious restructuring and insolvency work. With a remarkable breadth of practice and extensive experience, Rebecca has acted on a wide range of workouts, business recoveries, stressed financings and administrations and liquidations. Rebecca has also advised on a series of real estate and corporate restructurings in many jurisdictions, including, currently, on the restructuring of Abengoa in Spain, the largest ever European restructuring involving three separate processes, including a Spanish judicial confirmation, an English company voluntary arrangement (CVA) and U.S. Chapter 11 proceedings.

Richard Godden

Richard has been a partner at Linklaters for over 25 years during which time he has advised on a wide range of transactions and issues in various parts of the world. He looks after corporate clients, professional services organisations, investment banks and other institutions. Richard’s experience includes his time as secretary at the UK Takeover Panel and a secondment to the Hong Kong office. He also served as global head of client sectors, responsible for Linklaters’ industry sector groups, and was a member of the global executive committee. Richard is now senior relationship partner for a number of clients.  He is also a member of the UK Takeover Panel.

Richard Hodgson

Richard specialises in complex, cross-border restructuring and insolvency matters, having worked in the field for over 16 years, with a particular focus on representing insolvency officeholders, creditors, corporate debtors, directors and other stakeholders, including on contingency planning. Richard’s most recent experience has spanned a wealth of sectors, including the financial services / financial institutions, consumer, retail, manufacturing and oil and gas sectors. He has particular expertise in distressed M&A acting for both private equity and trade purchasers and insolvency practitioners as sellers. Richard also advises a number of financial institution clients, regulators and other stakeholders on matters relating to bank financial restructuring, bank resolution/failure, compliance with BRRD and related matters. Richard was part of the original Linklaters team that led on the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 and continues to act for the administrators of LBIE.

Richard Cumbley

Richard is global practice head of Linklaters technology, media and telecoms practice. His practice focusses on advising large multinationals and governments on complex information management, data privacy and government data access issues. He also works on large-scale technology related sourcing, IT and services contracts, in both contentious and non-contentious environments.

Richard Levy

Richard has a broad range of experience in international capital markets transactions, including debt, equity-linked and equity offerings, issues of regulatory capital instruments, liability management transactions and structured note issues. He advises both investment banking and corporate clients.

Richard Bussell

Richard is a partner in Linklaters' Restructuring and Insolvency team, comprising specialists throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia. Richard is based in London but has extensive cross-border and international experience, advising creditors (including banks and other financial investors and steering committees), insolvency office holders and corporate debtors and their directors on a wide range of workouts, business recoveries, stressed financings and insolvencies.

Roger Barron

Roger is a specialist in corporate law, including public and private mergers and acquisitions, demergers and reorganisations and corporate finance. He has a wide range of sector expertise, including media, telecoms, energy and utilities. Roger is also a key boardroom adviser to a number of the firm’s FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 clients, offering strategic guidance and counsel on corporate governance. Roger has mainly been based in the firm’s London office with earlier international secondments to Hong Kong, Singapore and Moscow, as well as acting for major clients on transactions in Germany. Recent transactions have included National Grid’s gas distribution network sale, Deutsche Bourse’s proposed merger with London Stock Exchange, E.ON’s demerger of Uniper and the sale of Argus Media.

Sarah Parkhouse

Sarah advises on all aspects of financial markets regulation, acting for investment banks, asset managers, wealth managers, retail banks, custodians and proprietary trading firms. She has a particular focus on regulatory issues arising in the private wealth management and retail sectors having spent some time on secondment to a major retail bank in 2010. She has also advised extensively on client money and AML issues as well as on senior manager culture and governance. She regularly advises her clients in relation to regulatory investigations and enforcement matters and has extensive experience in supporting transactions in the financial services sector. Sarah has helped a number of clients manage their cross border regulatory risk, often obtaining advice across multiple jurisdictions to identify licensing and conduct risks, then guiding her clients to reach the best pragmatic solution to manage those risks. She is currently advising clients on the impact of Brexit to their business model. She particularly enjoys leading large-scale regulatory change projects, tracking developing legislation from the policy stage, through to draft legislation, client impact assessment and project planning, implementation and business as usual. Sarah was based in the Linklaters’ New York office during 1993 and 1994, where, among other mandates, she worked on a number of debt and equity capital markets transactions for banks and corporates based in South America. In 2010 Sarah undertook a four month secondment to the retail legal team of a major high street bank. She is regularly called upon to provide training and present on regulatory developments to her clients and in 2014 featured in Financial Times Timewise UK’s 50 most powerful part-timers.Work highlights:Sarah enjoys a wide variety of regulatory work, reflecting the diversity of her client base.  She includes among recent highlights: Implementation of the Alternative Investment Fund Manager Directive for a major asset manager, involving the restructuring of their fund management business, the establishment of a SuperManco and the migration of over 20 funds to the new platform Undertaking an extensive multi-jurisdictional licensing and conduct review involving obtaining and digesting detailed advice from over 100 jurisdictions across a wide range of financial services and products to support a client’s cross border risk management programme Supporting a number of clients through regulatory investigations and S166 Skilled Persons reviews on a range of topics including suitability of advice, client money issues, AML compliance and regulatory compliance of product disclosure materials Implementation of the Senior Manager and Certification Regime for a number of clients Acting on implementation of Ring-fencing legislation for a major high street bank Advising a range of clients from both the Sell-side and Buy-side on the impact and implementation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II)  

Sarah Mook

Sarah specialises in large, complex debt and equity restructuring matters. She has a particular focus on debtor advisory and capital structure solutions, including bank debt restructurings, distressed mergers and acquisitions, exchange offers and structured financing. Sarah has extensive cross-border and international experience advising corporate debtors and their directors across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Prior to joining Linklaters, Sarah worked for 12 years at Goldman Sachs in London as a managing director in the restructuring advisory and financing group. Prior to joining the investment bank, she also spent 14 years working as a lawyer in private practice.

Sarah Wiggins

Sarah is a board room adviser and regularly works on a wide range of corporate transactions often with a cross-border element and high profile crises and investigations. Sarah is the firm’s global head of clients and sectors, and her experience spans the oil and gas, chemicals, real estate, professional services, insurance and FMCG sectors.Sarah leads on several key relationships with a number of the firm’s significant clients, including BP, Reckitt Benckiser and PwC. “I am a trusted adviser to company boardrooms, offering clients practical, business-focused advice that is strongly aligned with their commercial requirements and objectives.” For 16 months in 2015/16 Sarah acted as interim general counsel of Reckitt Benckiser. Sarah advised on a number of acquisitions, including RB’s acquisition of Hypermacas’ contraceptive business, the reorganisation of various interests of Manon in China and RB’s $17.9 billion acquisition of Mead Johnson Nutrition Company (completed July 2017). Also, Sarah led a legal team of internal and external lawyers in relation to a number of business critical investigations – including the DoJ and FTC investigations and related proceedings (arising from certain matters relating to the RB Pharmaceuticals Business prior to its demerger in December 2014 from Indiviour PLC) and the high profile crisis management issue facing one of RB’s subsidiaries, Oxy RB (“Oxy RB”), in relation to deaths and injuries caused by a humidifier sanitiser which Oxy RB produced and sold in South Korea between 2001-2011. The matter involves substantial civil and criminal litigation in Korea. She has also advised, amongst other things, on (i) the development of a wide-ranging compensation plan designed to satisfy local requirements and United Nations guidance; (ii) engagement with the United Nations Special Rapporteur; (iii) engagement with a committee of the Korean National Assembly (the equivalent of a UK Parliament select committee) and associated engagement with the Korean law making process; and (iv) engagement with the UK-government and regulators. The matter exemplifies her ability to manage complex multi-jurisdictional, cross disciplinary matters affecting a FTSE100 company. The case is politically and publicly significant in Korea.Sarah was seconded to BP's head office for eight months in 2012/13, where she worked closely with the general counsel and deputy general counsel on a number of market-related and crisis management issues, including criminal settlement with the DoJ, as well as reinforcing her knowledge of the current key issues to consider for corporate energy transactions.Sarah was listed as one of 2014’s star lawyers in The Lawyer’s annual Hot 100 list, and was profiled in The Law List by Powerful Media in 2015 and in 2017 was named an Acritas Star Law in a new global database of client nominated Star Lawyers.

Satindar Dogra

As head of the firm’s London office Dispute Resolution practice, Satindar is widely acknowledged as an expert in corporate crime and fraud. He counsels clients on strategies, policies and procedures to comply with the UK Bribery Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) rules, as well as offering expert advice on investigations. Satindar is also a specialist on anti-bribery and sanctions, including advising more than 70 clients in relation to the European Union’s Russian sanctions regime.

Scott Simpson

Scott acts for and advises banks, asset managers, alternative investment managers and hedge funds on a broad range of situations and practice areas including acquisition/leveraged finance, real estate finance, special situations financings and cross-border restructurings.

Simon Price

Simon is a highly experienced real estate lawyer with versatile expertise in corporate real estate transactions, including joint ventures and acquisitions and disposals of real estate assets and holding structures. He advises developers and investors on the full scope of contractual arrangements, including leases, management and development agreements. He has specialist knowledge concerning development projects, the financing of investments and dealing with insolvent or distressed assets and structures. Simon also has particular experience in the hotel sector, acting for investors, developers and funders on hotel and branded residences transactions throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East and on the negotiation of operator agreements. Work highlights: Simon has advised on a wide range of high-profile real estate deals. These include advising: TIAA on the establishment of a three-way joint venture with the Swedish national pension funds, Forsta AP-Fonden and Andra AP-Fonden, to create a £3bn office fund with assets in the UK, France and Germany and on the acquisition of 60 Great Portland Street, London W1 a North American pension fund on its formation of a £1bn joint venture with Aviva Life over a portfolio of real estate assets in central London Brookfield on the disposal of a 50% interest in the Principal Place London office development project to the Italian asset management company Antirion SGR, based on an asset value of £763m Meyer Bergman, a real estate investment management firm, on the acquisition of a portfolio of 14 residential development sites from Tesco for £250m and ongoing development advice a Middle Eastern investor on the acquisition of a five-star London hotel for £280m TIAA on the acquisition of the Lakeside Extra Retail Park and Tunnel Retail Park from Hammerson for £93m Brait, the South African private equity group, on the acquisitions of New Look Retail and Virgin Active gyms

Simon Firth

Simon specialises in the structuring of derivative products, the provision of derivatives advice and litigation. He regularly advises participants in the financial markets about the interpretation of standard form documentation and the legal implications of key developments.

Simon Branigan

Simon has extensive experience advising corporates, financial institutions and investment trusts on mergers and acquisitions (both public and private), joint ventures and equity capital markets transactions. He has been involved in some of the most complex and high-profile multi-jurisdictional transactions over the last few years.Simon’s experience spans the mining, retail and consumer, and oil and gas sectors. He has extensive experience in the financial services sector, and is co-head of the firm’s bank sector.

Steve Smith

Steve specialises in real estate finance transactions of all kinds, with a particular emphasis on more structured and/or distressed transactions. He has extensive experience of advising on multi-disciplinary and cross-border real estate finance transactions in the most demanding circumstances. Selected relevant experience relevant to the leisure sector includes advising: the senior lenders on the restructuring of the Arora Airport Hotel portfolio the senior lenders on the restructuring of debt secured on a portfolio of UK Hilton Hotels the senior lenders on the restructuring of a portfolio of Travelodge Hotels the sponsor on the refinancing of the Lanesborough Hotel the mezzanine lenders on the refinancing of a series of European hotels held by a pre-eminent private equity firm.

Stuart Bedford

Stuart is based in London and was the former head of the London corporate division. He has broad experience in private equity, on both buy-outs and growth fund deals and more generally in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and capital raisings. Stuart has extensive transactional experience in emerging markets, particularly South-East Asia and Africa. A former head of the Energy Sector, Stuart has been involved in a broad range of energy and natural resources deals. Key clients include Carlyle, Oaktree Capital, TIAA-CREF, Anglo American, Noble Group, Sumitomo Corp, Temasek, Standard Chartered Bank and ANZ.

Toby Grimstone

Toby specialises in international banking deals. He has wide-ranging knowledge advising banks and borrowers in syndicated and secured bank financings, with a particular focus on corporate lending, event-driven, structured and limited recourse financings (including commodities, structured trade and export financings in emerging markets). Toby leads the firm’s relationship with a number of major mining and banking clients and is one of the firm’s mining sector leaders. Toby is actively involved in the firm’s Africa practice and is also co-head of the firm’s Nigeria desk and a member of the coordinating committee covering the firm’s alliance with South Africa’s premier law firm Webber Wentzel. Toby spent three years in the firm’s Singapore office and was seconded to Credit Suisse (in 2001) and Barclays (in 2007), equipping him with first-hand knowledge of the banking sector and deep insight into the relationship between banks and law firms.

Tom Watkins

Tom is a partner in the real estate team. With a background in corporate law, Tom acts on a range of corporate transactions where real estate is the fundamental asset, including on public and private M&A deals, joint ventures and restructurings. Tom has a varied client base, with particular experience acting for institutional investors on investments in the UK and European real estate markets. He has been involved in transactions across all sectors, including commercial property, logistics, hotels, retail and student accommodation, and has particular expertise of cross-border portfolio transactions.Work highlights Tom has led on many high-profile real estate transactions. His experience includes advising: A major US pension fund and its JV partner on its acquisition of a EUR700m portfolio of retail malls located in Spain, Italy and Poland Brookfield on its £4.6bn hostile takeover of Songbird Estates, the holding company of the Canary Wharf Estate AustralianSuper, the Australian superannuation fund, on two separate transactions to acquire a combined 67% interest in the Kings Cross redevelopment project alongside developer Argent A North American pension fund on: its JV with a listed UK REIT and the acquisition by the JV of a £1bn portfolio of logistics assets in Poland, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands its acquisition of three portfolios of student accommodation with an aggregate value in excess of £1bn its JV with a listed UK insurer and the acquisition by the JV of a £1bn portfolio of prime office/retail assets A private investor on the £400m acquisition of 334-338 Oxford Street A US hedge fund on its acquisition of two UK real estate portfolios CBREGI on several acquisitions/disposals, including the Angel Central Shopping Centre and several London office assets Lendlease on its £750m disposal of the Bluewater shopping centre

Tom Wells

Tom is a senior banking partner who has a wide-ranging banking practice specialising in structured finance, margin lending and corporate finance. He acts for leading financial institutions and a number of corporate borrowers operating across a variety of sectors and jurisdictions. Tom works closely with the firm’s Pensions and Insurance groups assisting banks, insurers and corporates with bespoke collateral and funding arrangements designed to address pension scheme deficits or facilitate large insurance-related transactions. He also advises on the recent legislation requiring UK banks to “ring-fence” their retail operations from their other banking activities. Tom is responsible for managing the firm’s relationship with a major German banking client. He is a leader of the firm’s bank sector, as well as being a group leader within the Banking practiceWork highlights:Tom has led on many banking transactions. Most recently, these include advising: numerous banks on margin lending transactions, with underlying shares in the UK, Russia, Spain, Portugal and Israel a major UK bank on collateralisation of its obligations under various pension schemes the lenders of John Laing’s £400m syndicated facilities the lenders of Harrods’ £850m syndicated facilities Graff Diamonds on its US$470m senior secured facilities House of Fraser on its £225m senior secured facilities Kier on its £380m corporate and acquisition facilities and €100m schuldschein Redrow on its corporate and development facilities Deutsche Bank on the £1.8bn disposal of the commercial real estate loan book of Deutsche Postbank London branch

Tony Bugg

Tony is widely acknowledged as the preeminent restructuring and insolvency lawyer in the UK. Over the past 20 years, Tony has been involved at the top level on many of the most significant restructuring or insolvency deals. Most notable was his leading role as the principal lawyer from September 2008 onwards advising the administrators in the insolvency of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (LBIE). He also specialises in strategic planning and advisory work and distressed M&A. Throughout his career, Tony has acted for the full range of businesses regarding insolvency and restructuring, including insolvency administrators, creditors and debtors. His clients comprise all the major accounting firms, prominent banks, financial institutions, private equity and hedge funds, distressed investors and insolvency practitioners. Tony has also held principal roles in the firm’s management. He was global head of the restructuring and insolvency practice between 2006 and 2016, and then became the firm's global practice head of Banking between 2016 and 2019.

Tracey Lochhead

Tracey is a corporate partner who advises on a wide range of corporate, corporate finance and commercial matters across various sectors but with a focus on the bank and financial services sector. She acts for private equity houses, banks and corporate on public and private mergers and acquisitions, loan portfolio sales, corporate restructurings and joint ventures as well as equity capital market transactions. Tracey’s experience includes advising Cerberus on its acquisition of the Northern Rock entity and £13bn of mortgages; Investec of the sale of its UK mortgage business Kensington Group, together with other mortgage assets, to funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities Advisors and TPG Special Situations Partners; and Glencore on its merger with Xstrata.

Yohan Liyanage

Advises on a broad range of contentious and non-contentious IP projects, including UK and multi-jurisdictional patent litigation, IP licences and commercialisation arrangements, and the IP aspects of cross-border M&A, joint ventures and IPOs.