Simon Knott

Real estate, retail.

Partner in the real estate team. He has considerable experience dealing with all aspects of commercial real estate including acquisitions, disposals, letting, development and funding. He has particular expertise acting for large corporate tenants with fast ‘roll out’ programmes with a focus on the retail and leisure sector including numerous convenience stores. His clients include Fitness First and White Stuff Limited. Examples of work include: acting for Fitness First for 14 years acquiring numerous gyms upon their behalf and dealing with general property matters. He dealt with the property aspects of the recent CVA and the subsequent disposal programme of the non-performing gyms. He met Fat Face when it had one shop and acted for the company until Jules and Tim’s (the founders) exit including dealing with the property aspects of that sale. Over the last five years he has been heavily involved with ground rents and his team have acquired hundreds of ground rent investments with an aggregate value in excess of £125m. He has acted for IKEA in connection with the development of the IKEA Southampton store; for a property investment fund in connection with the sale of a ground rent portfolio of 5,000 units; and for one of the big four banks in connection with the provision of acquisition finance in respect of West Tower Liverpool.

Colston’s School, Bristol; Bristol University (LLM).