Michelmores LLP

Business Commercial

I am a Partner in Michelmores’ Commercial team, collaborating on a diverse range of matters for businesses across the UK and further afield. I focus on advisory work for large corporates and investors, including in the energy sector, as well as having a specialism in competition and related areas of law.

Increasingly, our investor clients are focussed on sustainability, which has led recently to work for me within the nascent markets for credits derived from (for example) biodiversity net gain, nutrient neutrality and carbon sequestration. My previous experience in documenting arrangements for funding underpinned by credits created under the UN’s Clean Development mechanism (often then sold into the EU emissions trading scheme) has been put to good use.

I trained, qualified as a lawyer (on the same day as our first fax machine was delivered) and worked on corporate transactions for several years in London in private practice, before a very interesting few years as General Counsel and latterly Company Secretary of a listed mining, minerals and chemicals group, operating globally.

I then joined Michelmores, at that time located in very traditional offices opposite Exeter Cathedral; helping out on a ‘temporary’ basis on a particular project, while I looked for a longer-term role. 19 years later, I continue to be part of a remarkable journey for the Firm, which is now around five times as big as when I joined, although no longer in possession of a fax machine.

Expertise

• Antitrust & Regulatory
• Asset Management
• Commercial
• Competition, Regulatory Compliance & Investigations
• Energy
• Funds
• Legal Services in Asia
• Merger Control & National Security
• Sustainable Economy

Ian Holyoak - Partner - Commercial | Michelmores