Simmons & Simmons

Client Satisfaction

Aaron Patience

Aaron heads our Tokyo office. He specialises in guiding Japanese businesses through international corporate transactions and global businesses on their Japanese operations. A fluent Japanese speaker who has lived in Japan for over 10 years, Aaron advises Japanese businesses on all areas of cross-border M&A, including sales, acquisitions and alliances in a variety of sectors, including TMT and Healthcare & Life Sciences. His experience includes acting on the full range of corporate and commercial documentation, including in connection with share sales, business sales, shareholders’ arrangements and business alliances, transitional services arrangements, supply and distribution agreements and licences of IP.

Adam Brown

Adam advises on complex disputes affecting clients in the financial services sector. Adam’s practice includes litigation, regulatory investigations, and internal investigations on behalf of firms and individuals. He acts for a range of clients, but has a particular focus on work for banks, asset managers and wealth managers. Adam is recognised for his expertise in civil fraud matters, including in fraudulent misrepresentation, market misconduct, insider dealing, and asset recovery. Adam also specialises in securities litigation, shareholder actions and partnership disputes.

Adam Cooper

Adam Cooper is a partner in Simmons & Simmons’ project development and finance group with more than 17 years’ experience in the energy and infrastructure industries. This includes 14 years of nearly continuous involvement in the development and project financing of LNG projects. Adam’s involvement in the LNG industry has given him extensive experience of global gas markets and projects. Recently, this has included major transactional experience in the development of unconventional natural gas reserves in North America and Adam is one of the few lawyers in the London market with genuine expertise in shale gas. Adam’s practice currently includes natural gas and LNG projects, trading and financings in Africa, the Middle East, North America, Europe and South East Asia.

Adrian Smith

Adrian advises on a wide range of intellectual property and related commercial matters with particular emphasis on registered trade marks, passing-off, copyright and design right, including enforcement and other contentious work in relation to brands. Adrian’s practice includes advising and acting for household names in a diverse range of fields including consumer products, financial services and financial markets, and for clients in the TMT sector. As leader of the firm’s brands group in London, a significant part of Adrian’s practice is in advising on UK, European and global trade mark (and domain name) clearance, registration, conflict resolution (oppositions/revocations) and portfolio management together with related protection and enforcement work.

Agnès Rossi

Partner

Alan Davies

Alan is a partner in the capital markets group, which forms part of the financial markets department. He has worked on a wide range of structured finance and derivatives work including: repackagings, asset-backed financings, CDOs (both cash and synthetic), securitisations, swaps, repos and a wide variety of commodity, credit and equity-linked products both in OTC and securitised note format.

Alejandro Guerrero

Alejandro is a partner in our EU Competition Law and Tech Regulation practice based in Brussels and in Madrid. He currently specialises in antitrust and commercial regulation, compliance and investigations, as well as in related disputes and litigation, in a variety of sectors including TMT, energy, consumer products and e-commerce. Specifically, Alejandro advises clients on the interplay between competition law and the GDPR, cybersecurity, and other related aspects of EU tech and platform regulations. Throughout his career, he has had first-hand and material involvement in important competition matters in the TMT sector, including two of the four Google EU investigations since 2010, and two four-to-three mergers in the telecoms sector (WIND/Hutchison/JV and Telefónica Deutschland/E-Plus). He has developed its expertise on competition and data privacy law and policy, and advises clients on the impact on their business of future EU regulation, such as the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Alejandro originally trained at the energy merger unit of the European Commission. Over the years, he has represented and acted for clients in numerous mergers across a variety of sectors, including the following: the European Commission, in two in-depth reviews in the gensets and paper European markets. a telecommunications service provider, in the completion of its €21.8 billion JV with its competitor in Italy, obtaining a clearance with remedies. an insurance service provider in its acquisition of a brokerage business representing €800 million in revenues and €1.9 billion in total assets. a manufacturer of pulp and paper products in its $1.45 billion acquisition of a competitor. a manufacturer of printers and electronic devices in its $3 billion acquisition of a networks equipment manufacturer. a cosmetics manufacturer in its $240 million acquisition of a competitor. a beverage producer in its $3.2 billion acquisition of a manufacturer of home-beverage products. Alejandro is qualified in Spain and in Belgium, and speaks fluently Spanish, English and French. He has an LL.M by the Université Libre de Bruxelles and an MBA by the University of Chicago, and is CIPP/E certified under the IAPP. He has co-edited two textbooks on e-commerce and on competition and trade in the pharmaceutical sector. He currently lectures on EU Competition Law at Queen Mary University, and on GDPR and EU tech regulation at King’s College University.

Alexander Brown

Alexander is a partner in the information, communications and technology group who advises on outsourcing and commercial ICT contracts for users and suppliers of ICT products and services. He also has a particular specialism in data protection and privacy. His experience includes handling large-scale, complex outsourcings (both IT and business process), software development, licensing and maintenance, telecoms supply and procurement contracts, major commercial contracts for the supply of goods and services and assisting clients in a variety of industries on all aspects of privacy compliance.

Alexander Thavenot

Alexander is a partner and solicitor advocate in the financial markets litigation group. He specialises in handling complex disputes and investigations, particularly those involving structured products, derivatives, asset financing, real estate, and commodities.

Alexandre Regniault

Alexandre specialises in arbitration, litigation and dispute resolution principally on behalf of Life Sciences (pharmaceutical, medical devices and biotech) companies and significant players in highly-regulated industries. His experience as a litigator mainly covers product liability, breach of contract, break off of negotiations, comparative advertising and claim recovery. He is also a member of the firm's Crime, Fraud and Investigations Group. He also has significant expertise in transactional and licensing negotiations, compliance audits and advice on regulatory matters, advising notably sponsors of clinical trials (including on data protection issues), and major companies in the sector on pricing, reimbursement, advertising and commercial practices. Alexandre is experienced in crisis management and frequently liaises with the French regulatory authorities on behalf of industry players. Alexandre advises insurers and reinsurers, especially in the fields of professional and product liability. His experience includes regulatory advice (audit of insurance programmes for compliance with French insurance law), risk analysis, coverage analysis, settlement negotiations with the insured, and representation of the insurer (and/or the insured, according to the terms of the insurance policy) before French Courts. He coordinates the activities of the Intellectual Property team in the Paris office of Simmons & Simmons.

Alfredo de Lorenzo

Alfredo's core areas of specialisation are capital markets, corporate and banking. He has been involved in a variety of international transactions such as major initial public offerings, privatisations, mergers and acquisitions deals, debt issues, syndicated loans, repackagings, securitisations and other complex structure finance transactions.

Ali Crosthwaite

Ali specialises in commercial real estate with a particular focus on prime City of London and West End investment grade property. She acts primarily for institutional investors and private equity funds in relation to the structured acquisition and disposal of investment assets, joint venture arrangements and financing as well as all aspects of landlord and tenant law. She also specialises in advising TMT clients in respect of their real estate requirements.

Allan Yip

Allan specialises in prime brokerage, derivatives and structured products. He advises investment banks and other corporate and financial institutions on a full range of derivative products in over-the-counter, securities and fund wrappers, focusing particularly on tailored derivative transactions, such as corporate equity derivatives, structured repos and structured credit derivatives. He also regularly advises hedge fund managers on all aspects of prime brokerage, derivatives and other trading agreements. He has extensive in-house experience, having spent over seven years of his career as senior in-house legal counsel at two leading US investment banks.

Alyson Lockett

Alyson is a partner in the banking group, which forms part of the financial markets department. She is a finance lawyer who acts for banks, funds and corporates on a wide range of cross-border banking transactions. Her experience includes investment grade and leveraged finance, tax-structured loans, real estate financing, receivables financing, stressed refinancings, restructurings and distressed debt trading, as well as other general banking work. Alyson’s practice is primarily lender-based, but she also acts regularly for borrowers (both corporates and funds). She has a particular focus on structured loans, emerging markets loans, debt trading and restructuring.

Amer Siddiqui

Amer is a partner in the London Structured Finance and Derivatives group and member of the asset-backed finance and securitisation team. He has extensive experience of advising on a variety of (public and private) asset-backed finance transactions and securitisations, with a particular focus on residential mortgage-backed and commercial mortgage-backed transactions, covered bonds, asset sales and warehousing arrangements. Amer is a member of the EMF – ECBC Covered Bond Label Advisory Council. He was recently recognised as a "Rising Star" in Capital Markets – Euromoney LMG "Rising Stars Guide 2016", and Capital Markets, Structured Finance and Securitisation – Euromoney LMG “Rising Stars Guide 2017”.

Andrea Accornero

Andrea specialises in private equity and M&A. Andrea has extensive experience of private equity transactions for both Italian and international funds. He has advised some of the most respected and recognised players on a continuous basis on their acquisitions, disposals and refinancings.

Andrea Finn

Andrea advises clients on a variety of employment law issues. She works closely with clients, who include major financial institutions and multinational corporates, advising them on day-to-day human resources matters. She has experience of drafting contractual and individual bonus arrangements; advising on disciplinary and grievance procedures; managing long-term sickness issues; individual and collective redundancy processes; and negotiating departures. Andrea has also advised clients in respect of a variety of employment tribunal and High Court claims including claims for race and sex discrimination, equal pay, whistleblowing, unfair dismissal and breach of contract.

Andrés Mochales

Andrés is the Dispute Resolution Partner Head and the Madrid office Country Head. He has almost 30 years of experience in litigation issues, arbitration and bankruptcy proceedings. He is also experienced in corporate restructuring, insolvency and all types of civil and commercial procedures. He is a secretary on the board of directors of a number of Spanish companies.

Andrew Petry

Andrew Petry is a partner in the projects team. He has a broad range of experience in the energy and infrastructure sectors, with particular emphasis on banking, project finance and PPPs in the PPP, renewables, waste, power, transport, accommodation and LNG sectors. Andrew’s clients are financiers, project sponsors, borrowers, public sector entities and infrastructure funds. Andrew advises on shari’ah-compliant financings and has a growing reputation for acting on alternative funding structures for projects.

Andrew Scott

Andrew is a managing associate in the corporate team specialising in equity capital markets transactions. He has extensive experience advising issuers, underwriters, and sponsors in a wide range of capital markets transactions including IPOs, right issues, placings and other secondary offerings, and also regularly advises on Listing Rules, MAR, corporate governance and M&A matters.

Angus McLean

Angus is head of FinTech at Simmons & Simmons. He is an IP specialist with a particular focus on advising clients on the IP aspects of commercial and corporate transactions in a range of sectors including Financial Institutions and TMT. Angus also specialises in copyright and breach of confidence/trade secrets disputes arising out of employee moves. His clients range from top tier investment banks and market leading software developers to some of the UK’s most exciting FinTech start-ups. Angus is the Contributing Editor of the FinTech edition of Getting the Deal Through, a publication that answers 50 key legal and regulatory questions that arise for businesses operating in the FinTech sector across 22 jurisdictions. He has been a Techstars mentor on Barclays’ FinTech Accelerator in London since it launched in 2014 and was Simmons & Simmons’ representative on the Bank of England’s FinTech Community. Angus was also one of the industry specialist judges on Nesta’s Open Up Challenge (https://www.openupchallenge.io/, a competition ordered by the UK Competition and Markets Association to promote competition in the SME finance sector.

Annabelle Bruyndonckx

With over 25 years of experience in advising clients in the Healthcare & Life Sciences industries, Annabelle Bruyndonckx is recognised as one of the leading sector lawyers in Belgium. Strongly focused on Medtech and the digitalisation of (consumer) healthcare, Annabelle assists international pharmaceutical and biotech companies and global medical device manufacturers, as well as food supplements and cosmetic businesses. As litigation specialist and regulatory expert, her practice at Simmons & Simmons LLP covers all parts of regulated products’ life cycle from R&D to marketing authorisation/CE marking, qualification issues, pricing and reimbursement, manufacture and distribution, public procurement, advertising, compliance, and product liability. Annabelle heads the Regulatory Affairs Education Group & is a board member of Healixia, the Belgian community of professionals involved in the lifecycle of medicines, medical devices, in-vitro diagnostics, and other health-related products. She is a regular speaker at international Healthcare and Life Sciences conferences.

Arthur Stewart

Arthur is head of the firm’s UK private equity group in London. He focuses on transactions in a range of industry sectors often with a significant international or cross-border element. He has extensive experience in representing UK and international private equity sponsors and other financial institutions, corporations and investment banks on domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, commercial agreements, securities offerings and corporate restructurings. His recent work includes advising Veolia Water UK plc on the £1.2bn disposal of its UK regulated water business to Rift Acquisitions, a company formed by the Infra Capital and Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Funds; Intertrust Group Holding S.A. on the acquisition of Close Brothers’ Cayman Island operations and on its acquisition of Walkers Management Services; Credit Agricole on the proposed internal reorganisation and merger of the UK regulated brokerage business of CA Cheuvreux and CLSA and Anacap Financial Partners on the merger of Apex Credit Management with Cabot Financial; the related corporate reorganisation and refinancing of Apex and Veolia Water UK plc in relation to the sale of certain PFI interests in a competitive auction and Henderson and Gartmore on the sale of Gartmore’s retained stake in Hermes Private Equity to Hermes.

Ashleigh Low

Ashleigh is a Senior Associate at Taylor Vinters Via LLC. He works with the Corporate Team.

Augustin de Longeaux

Partner

Basil Woodd-Walker

Basil specialises in dispute resolution in the finance, telecoms, energy and mining sectors. Many of Basil’s cases involve parties or facts in Africa, China and Central Asia (including Russia and CIS). Basil has conducted institutional and ad hoc arbitrations under all the main rules, including LCIA, ICC, SIAC and UNCITRAL, and has acted on numerous ancillary court proceedings including enforcement of awards. In addition to advising clients on complex commercial disputes, he regularly acts for investors and States in relation to high-value claims under public international law. He acts for clients in court as well as in arbitration.Basil is a solicitor advocate and member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Calvin Tan

Calvin's practice focuses on banking & finance. He has significant industry experience advising both lenders and borrowers in relation to complex financing and restructuring transactions, particularly transactions which are cross-border involving Asian, European and African jurisdictions. He also advises on restructuring & insolvency matters in Singapore and the region, as well as banking and lending regulatory matters.

Cameron Roper

Cameron specialises in funds finance and general lending and advisory work. He acts for both fund managers and financial institutions. He has been involved in transactions involving net asset value (NAV) facilities, hybrid facilities and subscription line facilities, as well as bridging, acquisition and margin loan facilities. He has also advised on general partner, manager and co-investment facilities. Cameron’s experience covers a wide range of funds, including infrastructure, renewable energy, real estate, large buyout and mid-market funds, venture funds, fund of funds and emerging market funds.

Carl Meyntjens

Carl’s practice focuses on corporate and financial law. He has nearly 30 years experience in advising Belgian and international corporate clients, and financial institutions in a broad range of both domestic and cross-border transactions. He works across a variety of sectors and is referred to in all major legal directories. Carl is an “advocaat” at the Brussels Bar and works in English, Dutch and French. His recent work includes: advising an international energy company on the purchase of a major gas and electricity supplier in Belgium advising a leading international waste-to-product company on its merger with a major Benelux recycling group advising a Japanese conglomerate on the purchase and development of a major industrial site in the Brussels area advising a UK private equity fund in connection with the acquisition of a Belgian listed company through a leveraged take-private transaction in Belgium advising an international private equity fund on the primary (and secondary) buy-out of a leading Belgian industrial company advising one of the world's leading supply chain companies in establishing a pan-European account receivable securitisation program advising a consortium of international banks in their financing of the LBO of a leading Belgian technology player. Carl joined Simmons & Simmons as a partner in the Brussels office in late 2016. Prior to that, he was a partner for 18 years (of which ten years as Managing Partner) at another major international law firm in Brussels. Carl leads both the corporate & commercial and financial markets practices in Belgium.

Carlos Jimenez de Laiglesia

Carlos has extensive experience in commercial and corporate law advice. He has a deep understanding of the financial and TMT sectors and particular expertise in dealing with all kinds of mergers and acquisitions, commercial agreements and corporate advice, as well as in restructuring and liquidation of companies.

Carol Hewson

Carol has extensive experience of commercial litigation including domestic and international arbitration and mediation. With a focus on commercial real estate, landlord and tenant litigation and property insolvency, she acts for institutional landlords, developers and banks, as well as for commercial tenants. Carol also acts for major rail operators on a wide range of commercial disputes with other railway industry parties, including mediation, arbitration and bespoke railway industry dispute procedures.

Caroline Hunter-Yeats

Caroline is a financial markets litigation specialist with a particular focus on wealth management firms and complex products sold to high net worth investors. She also regularly advises on the contentious regulatory aspects of the FCA’s product and distributor governance in the retail structured products and asset management sectors. Caroline has been recognised in the major UK directories for a number of years as a leading individual in banking litigation, dispute resolution and professional negligence disputes. In 2009 Caroline was seconded to the wealth management division of a major bank where she headed up their litigation function. This has given her an in-depth insight into the challenges faced by in house counsel and how external lawyers can best support them.

Caroline Turner-Inskip

Caroline is a partner in the Real Estate team with a wealth of experience advising on the acquisition, disposal and portfolio management of commercial real estate assets. She specialises in advising banks and funders dealing with real estate financing, focussing on the asset in any financing deal. Caroline’s practice also focuses on dealing with CleanEnergy and renewables assets and she acts for both investors and funders in this is area.

Charles Bankes

Charles specialises in EU, competition and regulatory law and has extensive experience of their application within a wide range of industries. Charles’ practice covers all aspects of competition law including EU and UK merger control and cartel investigations, including appeals. He also has extensive experience of economic regulation in a number of sectors and has advised both regulators and regulated companies.

Charles Hawes

Charles’ practice focuses on international capital markets transactions and US securities law matters. He has represented many issuers and investment banks in connection with debt and equity issuances and has extensive experience advising non-US issuers on compliance with US securities laws generally.

Charles Mayo

Charles advises a wide range of leading listed companies, investment banks and brokers. He specialises in public/private partnerships, equity capital markets, and mergers and acquisitions transactions. Charles regularly advises on the listing, disclosure, prospectus and transparency rules and participates in a series of workshops on these rules with the Financial Services Authority and the London Stock Exchange. Charles also specialises in advising on the legal aspects of corporate governance and compliance, including advising on the Bribery Act. He also has particular experience in the life sciences, aerospace and defence and transport sectors. Charles’s recent experience includes: advising the Ministry of Defence on the public/private partnership with Carlyle in relation to QinetiQ, including the £1.3bn IPO of QinetiQ on the Official List, the first UK Government IPO for nearly a decade; advising the selling shareholders of Specifar Pharmaceuticals S.A., a generic drug developer, on the US$562m acquisition of the company by Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc.; advising on the ‘virtual’ acquisitions and AIM IPOs of Center Parcs and of Anker and on the IPOs of Plethora (UK), Endace (NZ) and Asian Citrus (China), Sinclair Pharma on its Main Market listings in London and Paris, Japaninvest on its Tokyo listing and CLSA as sponsor of the Hong Kong listing of RCG, the first Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing of an AIM-traded company; and advising the UK Government on the Energy Technology Institute, a not-for-profit public/private partnership to research lower carbon energy to help tackle climate change. Charles and Nick Benwell (litigation partner) led the team that won the Innovation in Anti-bribery and Corruption award at the Financial Times European Innovative Lawyers Awards 2011. Charles was also behind the firm winning the 2011 Best Regulatory Law Firm of the Year Award at the Thomson Reuters Accelus 7th Annual Compliance Awards. The Legal 500 UK highlighted Charles as a ‘Leading Individual’ in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector.

Charlotte Stalin

Charlotte is a partner in the financial services regulation practice, part of the firm’s financial markets department. She specialises in UK and European regulatory matters and advises financial institutions on a wide range of regulatory matters. In particular, Charlotte advises EU and non-EU investment firms and banks on the provision of financial services across Europe and on the establishment and structuring of their businesses. She also advises clients on the ongoing regulatory reform. Charlotte’s experience includes dealing with ongoing compliance with FSA rules. She also manages navigator – the Simmons & Simmons online regulatory subscription service, which provides information in relation to over 80 jurisdictions – the current products are: navigator: funds; navigator: closed-ended products; and navigator: share disclosure.

Chris Walton

Chris is a US securities partner who focuses on equity and debt capital markets offerings in the UK and across EMEA, including developing markets. His clients include corporate and sovereign issuers as well as major investment banks acting as underwriters in international offerings. Chris is a London-based partner with extensive experience in SEC-registered, Rule 144A and private placement securities offerings. He also advises corporates and financial institutions on public reporting matters and a wide range of M&A, debt restructuring, liability management, leveraged finance and other transactions.

Christian Taylor

Christian is a member of the corporate and mergers and acquisitions groups in our Paris office. The core of his practice consists of advising on private mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures, with an emphasis on the TMT sector. Most of Christian's work is cross-border, often involving investments in France or in other French-speaking countries (particularly in Africa). Christian qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales in 1996, and is registered with the Paris bar. He practises both French and English law. His recent work includes: advising Areva on its partnership with KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation) by which KEPCO took a 10% indirect stake in the Imouraren uranium mine in Niger; advising MTN Group on its acquisitions of mobile telecoms operators in Congo Brazzaville and Ivory Coast and advising Ecocem Materials on its joint venture with ArcelorMittal for the production of environmentally friendly cement.

Colin Leaver

Colin is a partner in the corporate group. He specialises in the financial institutions sector and leads the team providing corporate advice to the asset management client base. He advises six of the ten largest European hedge fund managers on corporate issues. Colin has extensive experience advising on international corporate finance deals, mergers and acquisitions and capital raising exercises for companies across Europe, India and China. Colin’s recent experience includes: advising BlueCrest on the repurchase of a minority investment held by the Man group for in excess of US$650m; advising a fund promoted and advised by a leading investment bank in relation to various minority investments in asset managers; establishing various alternative investment management groups including Altima Partners and Edoma and advising on the conversion of various alternative investment managers to limited liability partnerships including Perry Capital, Tudor and BlueCrest; advising Gottex Fund Management on its initial public offering and listing on the SWX; advising the shareholders/partners of various hedge fund managers on minority investments by institutional investors including in Lansdowne Partners, Spinnaker Capital and Brevan Howard; and advising on the reorganisations of the BlueCrest and Brevan Howard groups in connection with the establishment of operations in Switzerland.

Colin Passmore

Colin became the Senior Partner of Simmons & Simmons in 2011, but continues to maintain his litigation practice. Over the last 30 years Colin has worked in England, Hong Kong and the Middle East from where he has developed a varied commercial litigation practice that encompasses both international and domestic disputes. His particular focus areas are retail finance litigation, extradition disputes and large professional indemnity claims.

Craig Bisson

Craig specialises in derivatives, funds and investment products – and regularly advises asset managers, funds (UCITS and hedge), insurers, pension schemes and other major financial institutions on the terms of their derivatives and trading agreements. His practice focuses on the ‘buy side’ of the market, and consequently requires a deep understanding of both the structural arrangements and the regulatory landscape within which clients operate. His experience includes advising on repos, stock loans, credit, equity and property derivatives. He also regularly advises on distribution, investment management, custody of assets, prime brokerage and fund link agreements. Craig is an expert on EMIR and is currently advising some of the world’s largest financial institutions on implementation. In this regard, he has successfully negotiated a number of client clearing agreements, including for pension schemes, hedge funds, UCITS and QIFs. He regularly advises clients on AIFMD, particularly in respect of the contractual requirements underpinning depositary and asset management delegation arrangements.

Dale Gabbert

Dale advises fund managers, financial institutions, fund boards and entrepreneurs in the establishment, operation and governance of all classes of private funds, including private equity funds, hedge funds, real estate funds, credit funds and bespoke products. He also acts on the acquisition and disposal of fund managers, joint venture funds and secondary sales of fund interests. Dale regularly assists major institutional, high-net-worth and sovereign investors on their investments in private funds.

Dan Marjanovic

Dan is a banking and projects partner based in our financial markets practice in Asia. He has considerable experience in acting for banks, corporate borrowers and project parties on major financing transactions in the Asia Pacific region on matters ranging from acquisition financings, the development and financing of infrastructure projects in the energy/oil & gas and transport sectors, electricity generation (including Cleantech), water and wastewater projects, mines and mining related activities, commodity trade flows and a range of structured financing transactions.

Danny Tsang

Danny specialises in pensions law and has 20 years experience in advising on all aspects of pensions and benefits matters. His clients include employers, trustees and insolvency practitioners. His practice focuses on advising clients in relation to pension strategy and includes the restructuring of pension schemes such as scheme mergers and changes to benefit structures and de-risking solutions. He also advises on the pensions aspects of corporate transactions liaising with the Pensions Regulator, whenever necessary, as well as assisting the pensions dispute resolution team on pension dispute matters.

Darren Fox

Darren is in the financial services group that is part of the firm’s financial markets practice. He specialises in UK and European regulation of buy-side and sell-side clients, including hedge fund managers, private equity houses, investment banks and broker dealers. He is widely acknowledged as a leading regulatory advisor in the hedge fund sector. Darren regularly advises a wide range of financial sector clients on all aspects of the law and regulation applicable to the discretionary management of investments, the trading, clearing and settlement of transactions in securities, derivatives and other financial instruments (both on exchange and over the counter), investment banking activities and other financial services. Darren’s areas of specialism includes hedge fund manager regulation, exchange traded derivatives and banking regulation (including capital adequacy requirements).

Darren Oswick

Darren advises on a wide range of corporate tax and VAT issues, with a focus on private equity and employment tax-related matters. He has extensive experience in the corporate and individual tax issues which arise in such areas. He has also acted for clients on a number of tax and VAT litigation matters. Recent work includes: advising a number of clients on the application of the disguised remuneration rules to their pension and share scheme arrangements; advising a major international listed life sciences business on the disposal of part of its UK operations and related tax structuring issues; advising a number of major investment banks on private equity and real estate fund structures; advising the UK government on a number of matters, including the establishment of the Energy Technology Institute and the sale of the Fire Services College.

David Hicks

David advises both institutional and independent clients on constitutional and governance arrangements, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions and raising funds. He specialises in corporate advisory, corporate finance and transactional work, particularly within the financial services and wealth management sectors, and for investment trusts. His work for quoted companies includes leading the firm’s corporate compliance, annual reporting and general meeting work for listed clients. David advises listed, AIM-traded and other public and private companies on various company law and compliance matters, including in relation to the Companies Act 2006, listing rules, disclosure and transparency rules, UK corporate governance code and AIM rules. He advises investment trusts on fundraising and other matters, including a bonus issue of subscription shares for Fidelity Japanese Values plc which closed in summer 2014. David acts for a number of limited liability partnerships on structuring, constitutional and governance arrangements, particularly within the wealth management sector. He has advised on strategic and complex restructuring and transactional matters for wealth managers, insurers, insurance brokers and other authorised firms and individuals, both within the UK and internationally.

David Kidman

Partner

David Toole

David is a structured finance and derivatives partner specialising in a range of securitised and OTC derivatives and repackaging transactions. He has a particular focus on risk sharing transactions structured as credit derivatives, financial guarantees and insurance contracts and acts for a wide range of arrangers and investors in these products, including public sector and multilateral institutions. He also has extensive experience of credit, equity and fund-linked products.

Davide D'Affronto

Davide is a partner in the financial markets practice. He has extensive experience in advising on acquisition financing, cross-border syndicated lending and debt restructuring. He also has considerable experience in project financing and renewable energies. Davide prior to joining Simmons & Simmons worked as in-house counsel at the legal department of one of Italy’s largest banks, where he was involved in numerous transactions, including acquisition finance, domestic and international funding arrangements, securitisations and structured finance transactions.

Deian Rhys

Deian is a partner in our Real Estate group in London and advises on investment, leasing and development opportunities in a range of real estate asset classes. His clients include global financial institutions, funds and insurance companies and he has extensive experience in acting for major professional services, technology and other occupiers in landlord and tenant matters.Deian has a keen interest in corporate social responsibility, is chair of the firm's International LGBT Network and is active in diversity and mentoring efforts. He has ranked in the Leading LGBT+ Executives List presented by the Financial Times in consecutive years and is shortlisted for Role Model of the Year at the Pink News Awards 2019.

Dimitri Van Uytvanck

Dimitri heads the employment & benefits department for Belgium. He specializes in employment law and provides advice to a wide range of clients, finding solutions to their most complex legal challenges and he has an extensive experience in all sectors, including Financial Institutions, Life Sciences, TMT and Energy and Infrastructure. His main areas of expertise are labour law and social security law, with a specific focus on the employment law aspects of corporate restructuring, transfer of undertakings, flexible work arrangements, and privacy at the workplace. Dimitri also advises regularly on remuneration packages for executives, employee benefits schemes, and employment contracts. He provides strategic advice regarding labour union relations within companies and business-critical issues. Dimitri is known on the market as a pragmatic and to the point lawyer who always focuses on the legal and economic interests of the company. His recent work includes: successfully assisting a major insurance company in the transfer of its marine portfolio and the transfer of the employees. successfully assisting a multinational pharma company in a “soft” restructuring process, i.e. a change in working conditions for the employees without formal termination. successfully assisting an international entertainment company in respect of the outsourcing of certain activities. successfully assisting a multinational pharma company with the implementation of new flexible working methods and flexible working time schemes. successfully assisting a telecom company in the negotiation of the transfer of 600 employees in the framework of CBA 32bis. Before joining the firm in 2019, Dimitri was a senior associate at a leading international law firm based in Brussels. He is a frequent lecturer on employment related topics.

Ed Crosse

Ed specialises in handling complex financial and regulatory disputes for financial institutions. He advises clients on enforcement, default and counterparty disputes arising out of secruitisations, structured products, asset financing (real estate and aviation) and derivatives. Ed also represents clients on corruption and civil fraud-related matters, notably in the area of suspected corrupt payments. Ed is described as ‘a litigation partner with a huge amount of experience of financial disputes’, ‘extremely responsive’ and at ‘pains to make client relationships work’; and is known as ‘a real force to be reckoned with’.

Eduardo Peñacoba

Eduardo heads the Spanish Simmons & Simmons employment practice, covering both contentious and non-contentious labour and employment. Eduardo specialises in advice and counsel in cross-border transactions, including issues raised in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and integrations, as well as cross-border major projects, such as tax restructurings and outsourcing. This also includes labour issues such as collective bargaining, works council elections, EWC organisation and negotiations linked to reductions in work force and collective transfers. Eduardo provides advice on Spanish employment and labour issues to clients ranging from start-up companies to multinational corporations in the pharmaceutical (Life Science), finance, automotive and shipping industries.

Edward Smith

Edward specialises in pensions law and has over 13 years' experience of advising pension trustees and corporates on all aspects of pensions law. His practice is centred on redesigning future pension provision, reducing and managing legacy pension liabilities, ongoing trustee advisory work and the pensions aspects of corporate restructures and M&A. Edward also has extensive experience of helping international clients navigate the complex, and ever changing, UK regulatory regime to manage compliance and reputational risk.

Emma Sutcliffe

Emma is a partner within the financial markets litigation group of our international dispute resolution department. She has acted on a range of major investment banking disputes on both the financial markets and retail banking side and has advised large UK and foreign investment and retail banks, as well as other major financial institutions, on a wide range of issues. In particular Emma has extensive experience of contentious financial services work, including experience of regulatory investigations, enforcement and disputes, in particular involving the FCA and PRA.

Eric Blomme

Banking & Finance Partner at Simmons & Simmons, based in Brussels. Head of the Belgian Banking & Finance team. Expert in acquisition & leveraged finance, real estate finance, corporate lending and trade & export finance. Experienced adviser on restructurings and insolvencies.

Etienne Kowalski

Etienne is a partner specialises in product liability and commercial litigation. He mainly advises clients acting in pharmaceutical industry. He regularly assists or represents companies in criminal cases including product liability, public medical supply contracts or relationship between industry and healthcare professionals.

Eva Chan

Eva specialises in authorised/registered investment funds (listed and unlisted) including exchange traded funds (ETFs), futures and options funds, UCITS funds, hedge funds and structured funds. In particular, Eva has advised on or been involved with more than half of the ETFs listed on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (SEHK).Eva has also advised on fund restructurings, deauthorisation and on-going compliance issues in relation to authorised investment funds.

Fernando Aizpún

Fernando is particularly experienced in litigation and arbitration, including white collar crime. He is a highly respected specialist in procedural and arbitration law business issues. Fernando acts as an arbitrator before the Court of Arbitration of Madrid Bar Association, the Court of Arbitration of the Chambers of Commerce of Madrid and the ICCI Court of Arbitration. Fernando has considerable experience in corporate law and advising international and domestic companies.

Fiona Loughrey

Fiona advises on all aspects of the employment relationship, including hiring strategies; negotiation of employment terms and contract drafting; protection of confidential information, and enforcement of, and issues relating to, business protection restrictions; dispute resolution and litigation, including applying for and defending applications for injunctions; privacy and data protection; the employment aspects of mergers and acquisitions and restructurings, share option/stock purchase schemes; and audits of human resources procedures. Fiona also has particular experience in dealing with the defence of equal opportunities and discrimination claims.

Gary Barnett

Gary is a senior professional support lawyer in the corporate tax group. Before becoming a professional support lawyer, he qualified at another major international law firm as a transactional lawyer, advising on a wide range of corporate tax and VAT matters, with a particular emphasis on M&A transactions. Gary became a professional support lawyer at Simmons & Simmons in 1996 and has been responsible for developing the knowledge management strategy for the London corporate tax group, whilst providing support to the international tax teams across Simmons & Simmons. He has also been instrumental in developing means to use tax know how in a marketing context and is responsible for the content of the group’s knowledge products. Gary has written extensively on a wide range of tax topics and has previously contributed VAT commentary for De Voil Indirect Tax Service.

Gaven Cheong

Gaven is a partner in our financial markets team in Hong Kong. He has extensive experience in work relating to the establishment and structuring of a diverse range of collective investment schemes including hedge funds, real estate funds, private equity arrangements, hybrid funds and other structured products. He also advises on contentious and non-contentious regulatory matters in relation to investment management activity. Having formerly worked as a litigator with two other international practices, Gaven is also able to advise investment managers and fund clients across a variety of contentious issues that arise in relation to fund operation, restructuring, and investment.

George Chan

George has extensive experience in advising clients in relation to all intellectual property matters in China. His practice ranges from preparing trademark registrations, oppositions, cancellations and invalidations to developing licensing strategies for clients. This includes assisting international companies with China domain name matters; guiding foreign associates with patent, trademark, copyright, and contentious matters for China; consulting clients with regards to regulatory approval; and working with clients to develop global filing strategies. Additionally, George has assisted clients in the strategies to monetize the value of their intellectual property by developing R&D and licensing strategies.

Gideon Sharp

Gideon is a partner in the corporate group. He specialises in private equity and advising financial institutions (such as banks and hedge funds). Gideon also has significant experience in the life sciences, TMT and energy and infrastructure sectors. He advises on a wide range of corporate transactions, including M&A, equity financing, joint ventures and general company law, often with a cross-border element. Recently, Gideon’s practice has included acting on a number of growth capital and M&A transactions (auction sales, secondary buyouts, public to privates and business sales) including: AnaCap on its acquisition of Cabot Financial and on its acquisition of the IFG International Division, Oak Investment Partners and Goldman Sachs Principal Investment on growth capital transactions and Barclays on its sale of Intelenet (alongside Blackstone) to Serco and on its sale of part of its Indian credit card business. Gideon is ranked in The Legal 500 for private equity transactions.

Heather Rowlands

Heather is of Counsel in the contentious tax team, specialising in disputes relating to direct and indirect taxes, including environmental taxes. She has represented clients in applications for judicial review and appeals to the Tax Tribunals, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. She has also advised clients in connection with proceedings before the Courts in India and the Cayman Islands.

Helen Hagan

Helen is a partner in the UK Real Estate Finance practice. She specialises in all aspects of UK and European real estate financings and advises both lenders and borrowers across the spectrum of senior, mezzanine and equity structures. Helen’s unique understanding of clients' perspectives is drawn from her secondments to investment banks and funds, including with Blackstone in 2014 and with Goldman Sachs in 2017/18.

Helen Hancock

Helen has a wide range of experience in banking, structured finance, financial services and derivatives work including: advising on the issue and marketing of retail structured products; general financial services regulation; repackagings; asset-backed financings including securitisations; swaps; repos and a wide variety of OTC and note format credit and equity-linked products. She also advises financial institutions and large corporates on investment grade, and secured and acquisition finance lending.

Hinal Patel

Hinal advises on non contentious technology and sourcing matters, with particular experience in technology sourcing, outsourcing and general commercial contracting. Hinal advises both buyers and suppliers with particular expertise in the financial, aviation, healthcare, retail, media, hospitality, energy and technology sectors. Having spent some years practising in the Middle East, Hinal has a very international practice and is familiar advising international parties on contracts across borders.

Iain Duncan

Iain is a partner in the firm’s projects group. He has extensive experience of advising on transactions around the world in the mining, natural resources, energy and infrastructure sectors. In these sectors, he has acted upon a wide range of projects, advising on partnering arrangements (including contractual and corporate joint ventures), share acquisitions and equity and debt finance, asset purchase, construction, processing, transportation, offtake and operation and maintenance arrangements, as well as advising upon licensing issues in the natural resources sector and on development/investment agreements with host governments. Iain has also spent six months on secondment at an international energy/natural resources major. He regularly speaks at or chairs national conferences in the natural resources sector and is known by clients as having “a good understanding of projects and attendant risks, and he is good at finding solutions to problems”.. Iain also sits on the Council of MinSouth (the London based society for the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining). Recent work includes advising a Russian-based investment vehicle in relation to a uranium mining joint venture in Mongolia and a major Chinese mining company in relation to a coal mining project in Mongolia; on the partnering and financing arrangements for a copper and gold mining company with assets throughout Sumatra, Indonesia; in relation to the acquisition of a coal mining project in Mozambique; an international power company in relation to its bid for the Kosovo e Re lignite to power project to secure mining rights for about 330 million tons of lignite from the Sibovc South area to supply both units of a 1,238 MW power project; in relation to iron ore projects in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo, including in relation to infrastructure development issues; upon a mining joint venture in Gabon including in relation to port and rail infrastructure; Teesside Gas and Liquids Processing in respect of a project with (among others) RWE in relation to the construction and operation of a new pipeline and related infrastructure to process North Sea gas from the Breagh field and in relation to gas processing, allocation, operation and maintenance and offtake agreements; upon the financing of AES Corporation Kribi power project in Cameroon; and several rail companies (including Network Rail) in relation to various contractual arrangements, including advising NR in connection with the High Speed 1 rail link.

Ian Hammond

Ian is national practice group head of dispute resolution in the UK. He has over 20 years’ experience of dealing with substantial domestic and international commercial disputes. Much of Ian’s work has an international element, and he has experience of dispute resolution for clients in the energy and life sciences sectors in the courts of France, Italy, the United States and Japan, as well as the English High Court. Ian also has an established practice acting for professional services firms in relation to liability, regulatory and disciplinary matters with a particular focus on accountants and actuaries.

Ian Wood

Ian is a partner in the corporate & commercial group in Hong Kong. He specialises in public and private mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, equity investments and fund raisings. He has a particular focus in the financial institutions and asset management sectors and advises funds on transactions, governance and regulatory matters.

Isabella Roberts

Isabella is a partner in the corporate group in London. She has experience in a wide range of corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions and public and private fundraisings, including in particular advising funds and asset managers on infrastructure investments. Recent work includes: advising Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec on its £644m acquisition of a 25% interest in the London Array, the largest offshore wind farm in the world, from Dong Energy; advising Veolia Water UK plc on its £1.2bn disposal of its UK regulated water business to Rift Acquisitions, a company formed by the Infracapital and Morgan Stanley infrastructure funds; advising Gottex Fund Management Holdings Limited on its US$1.9bn IPO on SWX Swiss Exchange; and advising Telefónica O2 on its £1.9bn disposal of Airwave, the UK’s emergency telecommunications provider, to two Macquarie infrastructure funds; advising CFIG on the co-investment arrangements in relation to KKR’s acquisition of Cambridge and South Staffs Water.

Jacques-Antoine Robert

Jacques-Antoine is a partner in the Paris office, he is a general commercial lawyer, acting mainly for major industrial groups - notably high tech and pharmaceutical companies - shareholders of such groups or investment funds. He represents his clients in regulatory matters, transactions and disputes involving commercial and/or liability issues. Jacques-Antoine works in contract law including termination of agreements, transfer of agreements, advertising and distribution networks. He has notably participated in recent major operations, concerning regulatory and competition law for a high tech manufacturer. He has been involved in major product liability cases and has recently won a highly publicized case before the French Supreme judicial court on behalf of a multinational industrial firm (September 2003).

James Pollock

James is head of Simmons & Simmons’ international insurance litigation and professional risk group whose principal areas of practice are High Court litigation, adjudication and mediation, with a particular focus on professional liability, coverage disputes, reinsurance and construction. His professional liability practice focuses on defending solicitors, construction professionals and brokers. James is recognised for his expertise in contentious matters. Clients commend him for remaining “calm, clear and concise under pressure”.

James Bresslaw

James is head of the banking practice in London (part of the firm’s financial markets sector group) and has over 25 years’ experience as a finance lawyer at Simmons & Simmons. He advises on a wide variety of financial transactions including capital markets, loan and securitisation transactions and restructurings of such transactions.

James Cotter

James is a partner in the information, communications and technology group. He advises clients in a variety of industries and in the public sector on the full range of technology, outsourcing, communications, e-commerce and information law issues, both on a transactional and a standalone basis. Recent work includes advising Barclays Bank on business process outsourcing transactions, PCCW Global on the regulation of its international carrier and enterprise services business, UK Broadband on a successful bid to provide wireless network services and CCTV systems during the Olympics and as part of the BDUK rural broadband initiative, the Ministry of Defence on its £220m outsourcing of telecoms and broadcast infrastructure and services to run television and radio platforms for the British armed forces globally, and the Ministry of Justice in relation to its shared services ICT outsourcing programme.

Jason Bright

Jason is a partner in the international insurance litigation and professional risks group. He acts on behalf of primary and excess layer insurers (as well as reinsurers) providing high level coverage advice with regard to international casualty claims, primarily focussing on product liability and product recall losses, as well as large commercial property losses. He also has significant experience in dealing with complex engineering and heavy machinery related claims, as well as on shore energy coverage experience, and IP liability related claims.

Jason Valoti

Jason acts for international investment banks in relation to structured and OTC derivative transactions, synthetic and cash CDOs, CLOs and repackaged securities and other asset and fund backed structures, including Shariah compliant transactions. Jason also advises international investment banks in relation to equity and commodity linked note, warrant and certificate issues. In addition, he advises investment managers on structured debt capital markets transactions.

Jason Daniel

Jason is a partner in our corporate & commercial group. He has wide experience of advising on public and private M&A, joint ventures, reorganisations and general corporate and commercial matters. He has a particular focus on cross-border transactions and matters. He is frequently active on M&A transactions involving Japanese companies and acts as advisor to a number of leading Japanese groups on their activities internationally.

Jay Lee

Jay is experienced in advising banks and corporations on a wide variety of debt capital markets transactions (RMB bonds, G-3 bonds, equity-linked products, high yield bonds, asset backed securities and structured finances, MTNs, local currency bonds, and loan syndications). Jay also advises on structured debt products and derivatives transactions as well as mergers and acquisitions, asset management and other general corporate and finance matters.

Jayne Bentham

Jayne specialises in international arbitration as well as general commercial litigation and mediation covering a wide range of areas. She has written a guide to mediation in the EU (The EU Mediation Atlas: Practice and Regulation) for which she was awarded the CEDR award for excellence in ADR. Jayne co-authored the Simmons & Simmons guide to arbitration, ‘Arbitration Matters’.

Jek-Aun Long

Jek-Aun has a wealth of experience in private and retail funds as well as listed funds/capital markets work, including private equity, real estate, infrastructure and hedge funds and ETFs. His transactional and advisory experience includes acting for domestic and international clients on the structuring, establishment, registration and marketing of onshore and offshore funds or managed accounts investing in a spectrum of asset classes, and advising on licensing, regulatory and securities laws issues. He also advises corporate and institutional clients, university endowments, tertiary institutions and sovereign wealth funds in connection with their investments in funds, and assists fund managers with the establishment of their operations in Singapore. Jek-Aun has advised on closed-ended and open-ended corporates, unit trusts and limited partnerships. He also advises on share disclosure issues under the Securities and Futures Act.

Jeremy Hoyland

Jeremy has a broad range of financial markets experience, in particular in securitised derivatives and asset-backed securities. He has been the firm’s client partner for a number of its larger bank relationships and is currently the client partner for the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Jingyuan Shi

Jingyuan is a partner in the firm’s corporate and commercial department and focuses her practice on private equity and venture capital transactions in the TMT sector. She works primarily for international and Chinese TMT companies, and strategic and financial investors in the TMT sector. Her work encompasses matters in a broad range of cross-border investments, startups’ financing, regulatory compliance (data protection and competition), as well as intellectual property.

Jo Weston

With experience in all types of corporate transactions, Jo has particular knowledge of equity offerings, mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures. She now provides technical advice on corporate and corporate finance law, and analyses new law and regulation, ensuring that the firm is at the forefront of corporate law and practice.

Joanna Pearson

Joanna is a partner specialising in disputes and investigations in the financial institutions and asset management sectors. She has advised investment banks, asset managers and other major financial institutions in relation to a wide range of issues, including: structured products and derivatives disputes; portfolio mis-management claims; jurisdiction disputes and investigations. She has been involved in a number of large scale disputes in the High Court, and has recently been involved in a number of internal investigations with a regulatory element.

Jocelyn Ormond

Jocelyn has experience of advising financial institutions, other public and private companies and private equity investors on a broad range of corporate and private equity transactions, financing arrangements, commercial contracts and corporate governance issues. He has notable expertise in relation to private and public M&A, joint ventures (including public private partnerships) and equity capital markets (including AIM) with a particular focus on the Life Sciences (and wider healthcare) and Financial Institutions sectors.

Joel Smith

Partner

John Sayers

John is a finance lawyer specialising in transactional banking, structured finance and corporate trust work. His experience includes UK and cross-border investment grade and leveraged banking transactions, structured trade and commodities finance, ECA supported financings and emerging markets lending. John has acted for a variety of financial institutions, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank and The Royal Bank of Scotland.

John Kelsey

John is a partner in the Simmons & Simmons real estate group, which forms part of the financial markets department. He specialises in commercial real estate and has wide-ranging experience of advising on investment and development transactions. John has a wealth of experience in relation to the structured acquisitions and disposals of investment portfolios, joint ventures, sales and leaseback arrangements, infrastructure projects, and the more general aspects of landlord and tenant law. John has particular experience in dealing with the restructuring and insolvency aspects of real estate interests. He also specialises in dealing with real estate interests within industries such as hotel and leisure, oil and gas, and regulated business such as water companies. John represents a broad spectrum of financial institution clients, which include major investors, banks and property funds, and he acts for a range of developers, landlords and tenants.

John Slater

John has over 20 years’ experience practising intellectual property law in Hong Kong and China. His expertise lies in intellectual property litigation, particularly in respect of trademarks and copyright; implementation of enforcement and anti-piracy programmes; trade mark prosecution and brand strategy and management; IP transactional work including licensing of all types of IP rights, collaboration agreements, R&D agreements and due diligence; and acquisition of IP rights.

Jolyon Ellwood-Russell

Jolyon is a banking and finance lawyer with extensive experience in Asia and Europe. Jolyon specialises in debt finance (including banking, acquisition finance and project finance) with a particular focus and reputation in structured trade and commodity finance. He also has experience in financing infrastructure and renewable energy projects. Jolyon has focused his practice on Asian trade and commodity finance and advises both international financial institutions and traders and commodity banks on all aspects of the trade cycle from financing structures and documentation to regulatory requirements.

Jonathan Hammond

Jonathan is international head of the firm’s financial markets group as well as leading the national financial markets group in the UK. He is also a partner in the capital markets group in London and head of the firm’s financial institutions sector group. Jonathan acts for international investment banks in relation to CDOs and repackaged securities and other asset-backed structures, with particular expertise in synthetic transactions. He also advises major banks as arrangers and trustees on debt capital markets transactions and securitisations.

Jonathan Melrose

Jonathan is a member of the financial services group that is part of the firm’s financial markets department. He specialises in UK and European regulation of the financial services and markets sector, including market infrastructure; asset management and the trading, clearing and settlement of securities, commodities and derivatives, including market conduct issues; and the operation and structure of financial services businesses.

Jonathan Spencer

Jonathan specialises in defending professional indemnity claims against construction professionals (including architects, engineers and surveyors) and major contractors. He also regularly advise on complex, high value policy coverage disputes for London market insurers. Jonathan has experience of a wide variety of construction disputes involving, for example, iconic buildings, sports grounds, schools, hospitals, large residential schemes, commercial/retail and waste to energy facilities.His caseload routinely involves mediations and litigation (generally in the Technology and Construction Court) and he also has arbitration and adjudication experience.Represented the engineer in the widely reported Technology and Construction Court case of Goldswain and Another v Beltec Limited (t/a BCS Consulting) and Another [2015] EWHC 556(TCC). Undertaken a year-long client secondment at a major international Insurer.Recommended for ‘strong commercial acumen’, particularly on behalf of both insurers and contractors – the Legal 500 UK 2017

Jonathan Mellor

Debt Capital Markets Partner.

Jonathan Newman

Jonathan is a barrister in the firm’s market leading employment group in the UK. His practice involves advising leading financial institutions across a range of contentious and non-contentious strategic employment issues. He has extensive experience of litigation, particularly in relation to high value and sensitive discrimination and whistleblowing claims. He has appeared in the High Court, Employment Appeals Tribunal (in both England and Scotland) and the Employment Tribunal, and has acted as counsel before professional and regulatory bodies in various jurisdictions in the UK and overseas.

Joseph Chu

Joseph is a partner in the dispute resolution group. He advises and represents clients in arbitration, banking, general commercial, tax and trust disputes and regulatory investigations, with a particular focus on international arbitration and cross-border litigation.

Juan Sosa Pons-Sorolla

Juan advises on all areas of corporate and personal tax and also financial services regulation. He has broad experience in tax and regulatory matters relating to financial services, with particular focus on collective investment schemes and hedge funds. He also has considerable experience in international tax planning and property taxation. In addition, he regularly advises on the taxation aspects of employee benefits and incentive plans.

Julian Taylor

Julian has considerable experience of working with leading city financial institutionsand international organisations. He advises on the full range of employment law and human resource issues including advising on the strategic issues associated with reorganisations and restructuring, advising on collective consultation, redundancy programmes and outsourcing arrangements, and drafting related contractual and employment documentation. He also has extensive experience of High Court and tribunal litigation on a wide range of employment and general commercial matters. Julian regularly leads seminars and workshops on employment law issues. He is the head of Employment Law Training and is involved in training programmes for both clients and lawyers.

Juliet Reingold

Juliet specialises in major projects and public private partnerships focusing particularly on the transport / logistics, facilities management, utilities and defence sectors. She also has experience across a wide range of commercial transactions including outsourcings, contractorisations, privatisations, partnering, distribution, supply and other procurement arrangements across a range of industry sectors.

Kevin Cordina

Kevin is a European Patent Attorney and Head of the Patent Prosecution group of Simmons & Simmons. He specialises in the electronics, telecommunications (particularly cellular standards essential patents), and medical device technical areas, with a particular emphasis on helping clients obtain, defend, and enforce commercially valuable patent portfolios. Kevin advises clients from small start-ups to multinationals on all aspects of the patent process. Kevin is an expert in contentious matters at the EPO, with an enviable success rate in opposition and appeal proceedings.

Kevin Mooney

Kevin specialises in contentious and non-contentious intellectual property matters, focusing specifically on patent litigation, especially in the pharmaceuticals industry. Kevin is also rated as a leader in his field by The Legal 500, for patent litigation and in advising the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector, and the Global Counsel 3000.

Laurence Renard

Laurence is a partner in the Paris office. Laurence assists French and international clients on all aspects of French employment law both in contentious and non-contentious matters. This includes namely drafting employment documentation, individual and collective dismissals, collective relationships and negotiations, working time (35-hour law), high-level litigations, employment aspects of restructuring and corporate deals.

Lawrence Brown

Lawrence is a partner in the Information, Communications & Technology (ICT) group in London. He specialises in advising suppliers and customers in regulated sectors on major technology and outsourcing projects and has over 13 years’ experience in this area. He also advises clients on data protection audits and implementation programmes, as well as on areas such as data protection impact assessments, personal data breach responses and data subjects’ rights.

Lijun Chui

Partner, Dispute Resolution

Louis-Maël Cogis

Partner - Country Head Luxembourg

Maarten 't Sas

Maarten is a member of the Crime, Fraud and Investigations practice in Amsterdam and provides legal representation for both companies and individuals in matters relating to corporate criminal law, including money laundering, fraud (e.g. insolvency fraud, procurement fraud, investment fraud), bribery and corruption. He also advises on anti-bribery compliance and corruption related matters. Furthermore, Maarten’s practice includes internal investigations.

Mark Curtis

Mark Curtis is head of the firm’s international corporate and commercial practice group. Mark primarily advises financial institutions, funds and corporates on public and private mergers and acquisitions and related work. He has considerable experience in the life sciences sector and has advised on a number of securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions transactions in the healthcare market as well as significant transactions in the TMT and financial institutions sectors. Mark’s recent experience includes advising Telefónica on its £17.8bn offer for O2 plc and £2bn disposal of Airwave, a number of hedge funds on concert party and strategic issues relating to UK public M&A situations. Mark also led the team advising The Bank of Nova Scotia on the acquisition of the synthetic prima brokerage business of Daiwa Capital Markets. Mark has been recognised in The Legal 500 as ‘spearheading advice on corporate finance and M&A matters’ in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector.

Mark Carroll

Mark is a partner in the corporate group in London. He specialises in high-end M&A, joint ventures, strategic investments and equity capital markets work. He also advises on the UK Listing Rules, DTR’s and FSMA.

Mark Sheiham

Mark advises on the tax aspects of a broad range of finance, corporate and commercial transactions, particularly advising banks, fund managers and rating agencies on the tax aspects of CDOs, securitisations, receivables factoring, repackagings and other structured finance, capital markets and banking transactions. Mark also regularly advises on the tax aspects of fund structuring, flotations, corporate restructuring, fund management and real estate transactions. Mark is a Chartered Tax Adviser and is a member of the Law Society’s International Tax Sub-Committee.

Mark Waghorn

Mark is a partner in the banking group, which forms part of the financial markets department. He acts for all market participants in the real estate finance market: lenders, borrowers, senior, junior and mezzanine debt players providing investment, development and structured finance, including commercial mortgage backed securitisations. Mark also specialises in real estate restructuring and insolvency work, working with lenders and borrowers and with insolvency practitioners and LPA receivers.Key sector experience includes: residential, hotels and leisure, healthcare and retail.

Martin Shah

Martin’s broad based practice encompasses corporate, financial markets, real estate (including structured real estate) and commercial work, with an emphasis on clients in the asset management and investment funds and financial institutions sectors. His focus includes advising on funds and other investment products, together with structural tax issues for banking, asset management and insurance clients. Martin also has wide-ranging experience in structuring outsourcing arrangements in the financial sector, advising both banks, insurers and asset managers on IT and business process outsourcing. Martin’s broad based practice encompasses corporate, financial markets, real estate (including structured real estate) and commercial work, with an emphasis on clients in the asset management & investment funds and financial institutions sectors. His focus includes advising on funds and other investment products, together with structural tax issues for banking, asset management and insurance clients.Martin also has wide ranging experience in structuring outsourcing arrangements in the financial sector, advising both banks, insurers and asset managers on IT and business process outsourcing. Martin leads the financial services tax practice which won European Financial Services Tax Team of the Year at the International Tax Review European Awards in 2011 and 2013.

Matthew Hooton

Matthew has in depth experience on all facets of the real estate sector. He has acted for buyers and seller on investment deals, where he has advised on complex tax matters, corporate structures and joint venture arrangements. He has acted for landlords and tenants on shopping centres, portfolios and trophy buildings. Matthew has acted for developers in connection with site assemblies, options, pre-emptions, pre lets, forward fundings and forward purchases. He has also acted for, and on the other side of, the public sector in connection with urban regeneration agreements. Matthew has acted for the major banks, as well as funds, on real estate backed finance matters, including loan portfolios. He has acted for lenders and sponsors on a wide variety of PFI matters and has more recently acted on real estate restructuring deals.

Matthew Pitman

Matthew is a partner in the financial services group, a part of the firm’s financial markets department. He specialises in private funds formation and investment. Matthew’s expertise is in transactional, advisory and regulatory work in the asset management and investment funds sector. Matthew has a particular focus on the private (or closed end) funds arena, including matters relating to private equity, real estate, infrastructure, debt and other alternative asset classes. He also regularly advises major institutional investors on the terms of their fund investments.

Michael Gavey

Michael specialises in all types of transactions involving intellectual property. He has considerable experience in a wide range of industry sectors, including life sciences, TMT, energy and financial institutions. He advises regularly on licensing and collaboration agreements, as well as related commercial arrangements. He assists with sales of shares and assets sales, and financings, where intellectual property is involved. Michael also specialises in life sciences regulatory law, advising on issues, agreements and disputes concerning biobanks, clinical trials, marketing authorisation, manufacturing, distribution, promotion and pharmacovigilance.

Michael Lorraine

Michael is a partner in the capital markets group, which forms part of the financial markets department. He has extensive experience advising on a wide range of structured finance products including securitisation, repackaging, receivables financing and supply chain finance, with a particular emphasis on innovative asset-backed structures. He has advised investment banks, investment funds, originators, trustees and rating agencies and is experienced in a large number of asset classes including residential and commercial mortgages, leases, loans, auto loans and trade receivables.

Michael Burdon

Michael is a widely acknowledged expert in the field of Intellectual Property, especially in relation to complex, high-value, multi-country patent disputes. Michael has represented clients in numerous reported cases, in a diverse range of technologies from pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and medical devices through to electronics, software and communications. He has particular experience in relation to medical devices and Standard Essential Patents and FRAND licensing disputes. He also works closely with our patent attorney team to help clients develop their patent strategies. He advises a diverse range of businesses on maximising the protection, enforcement and extraction of value from their intellectual property rights.

Minesh Tanna

Minesh is a Managing Associate in Simmons & Simmons’ Dispute Resolution team in London. He regularly acts for clients on complex contentious issues across a range of sectors, with a particular focus on telecommunications, media and technology (TMT) matters. Minesh has particular expertise in Artificial Intelligence and eDiscovery solutions.

Neil Simmonds

Neil specialises in investment funds (both onshore and offshore) with emphasis on open-ended products including UCITS in Ireland, Luxembourg and the UK as well as hedge funds and funds of hedge funds in the Cayman Islands and other offshore jurisdictions. He also advises extensively on portfolio management agreements and generally on compliance and regulatory issues.

Nick Benwell

Nick is head of the firm’s crime, fraud and investigations group. He advises on a wide range of corporate crime, corruption and fraud-related matters. He is experienced at dealing with large scale and sensitive investigations involving the handling of issues in multiple jurisdictions, and regularly advises on reporting to and communications with enforcement authorities including the Serious Fraud Office and National Crime Agency. Nick also has over 25 years’ experience of a wide range of complex, high value commercial and corporate investigations and disputes.

Nick Cronkshaw

Nick is head of the international corporate tax group. He has a broad experience of corporate tax with a particular emphasis on transactional work including sales and purchases of companies, mergers, demergers, reconstructions, business sales and purchases, joint ventures, and VAT. Nick also advises on structured finance products, securitisations, business process outsourcing arrangements and real estate transactions. Nick is recognised as a specialist in the mergers and acquisitions field. Recent Work includes advising Renown Inc, a Tokyo Stock Exchange listed apparel company on its complex sale of the world famous Aquascutum brand, involving the simultaneous sale of the Aquascutum Asian IP portfolio to Hong Kong conglomerate YGM and sale of the shares to the owners of Jaeger, the retention of a long-term licence in Japan (the world’s largest market for Aquascutum products) and arrangements with the UK Government regarding pension liabilities; Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings Limited on the £211.7m acquisition of BG Group’s 50% stake in Seabank Power Limited; and advising DekaBank Group, the largest operator of open-ended property funds in Germany, in connection with the purchase of 14 Pier Walk, Greenwich Peninsula.

Olivia Delagrange

Olivia is a partner in the Kennedys Law Madrid office and is qualified in three jurisdictions: Spain (2006), Belgium (2004) and England and Wales (2015). She is a specialist in Marine, Product Liability, Construction, Property, Aviation and Energy and her client base includes insurers and reinsurers writing risks in Spain. Olivia regularly defends insurers and reinsurers and advises on coverage and policy wording. She has an extensive background in transportation law, including marine, road and aviation. She is often appointed for international insurance cases, which with her triple qualification and her ability to work in four languages, is no doubt an added value for (re)insurers. She also has specialist expertise relating to financial lines (D&O, BBB, infidelity).

Olivier Mignolet

Olivier specialises in commercial law and commercial litigation/arbitration, with a particular emphasis on regulatory legislation in the healthcare and life sciences sector, distribution law, real estate and intellectual property rights. Olivier is the local head of the dispute resolution practice in Belgium. He is also a member of the firm's crime, fraud & investigations group. Olivier has in particular gained significant experience of advising companies in the healthcare and life sciences sector. Olivier handles complex litigation and arbitration matters. He is recognised as one of the leading Healthcare & Life Sciences lawyers in Belgium. He represents and advises industry clients of all sizes from Top 10 global pharmaceutical and medical devices companies to Belgian biotechs, as well as trade associations. Olivier has also been a part-time lecturer at the University of Louvain (UCL) for 12 years and he is a member of CEPANI /CEPINA (Belgian centre for arbitration and mediation). Olivier has published articles and books on civil procedure, arbitration and pharmaceutical law.

Ombline Ancelin

Partner

Patrick Boylan

Patrick is a partner and solicitor advocate (all higher courts) in the dispute resolution group in London. He is a commercial dispute resolution specialist with a particular focus on contentious competition matters, regulatory investigations and arbitration. He is also an expert on privilege. Patrick specialises in advising clients in regulated industries including energy, life sciences, TMT and financial institutions. Patrick is also a member of the firm’s crime, fraud and investigations group.

Patrick Wallace

Patrick is an energy and infrastructure lawyer. He has many years of experience of power, oil and gas and infrastructure work. He acts on a wide range of transactions, covering projects, joint ventures, private M&A and asset acquisitions, privatisations, commercial contracts and trading and regulatory work. He has a broad-ranging practice both in the UK and internationally, where he has particularly strong experience in Central and Eastern Europe and South Asia. Patrick’s power sector expertise covers thermal, nuclear, and renewables generation, emissions trading, transmission, supply and distribution. He was heavily involved in establishing the UK power market at privatisation and in its subsequent reform; and he has worked on many major power projects and acquisitions in the UK, mainland Europe and Asia since the early 1990s. His other energy and natural resource experience includes oil and gas pipelines, refineries, supply contracts, oil and gas acquisitions and mining and water sector transactions.

Paul Baker

Paul is a partner in the financial markets litigation department, leads the firm’s reputation management group, and is the head of Simmons’ in-house eDiscovery team. He specialises in contentious financial services work, with a particular focus on the asset management sector, but also provides reputation management advice across various sectors. He has extensive experience of managing complex litigation and regulatory investigations, including those with an international element.

Paul Browne

Paul is a partner and head of the Structured Finance and Derivatives Group in the UK. He focuses on structured products and derivatives, covering a wide variety of asset classes.

Paul Li

Paul is a specialist in the field of financial markets regulation. He advises clients on both contentious and non-contentious aspects of their financial services businesses and specialises in related claims and regulatory and criminal investigations.

Peter Broadhurst

Peter is a partner in the firm’s EU, competition and regulatory group. He has broad experience of advising clients on competition law and merger control issues. He advises a wide range of energy and infrastructure, consumer, technology, finance and industrial clients. He regularly provides advice on the competition law issues arising from mergers, acquisitions and structural joint ventures, and also has considerable experience dealing with non-structural joint ventures and cooperation agreements. His practice also covers behavioural competition law, including abuse of dominance, and he has been involved in assisting clients in cartel investigations, as well as advising them how to avoid cartel liability and ensure compliance with competition law.

Peter Manning

Peter heads the firm’s European corporate recovery and restructuring practice. He is a partner in the banking group, which forms part of the financial markets department. Peter advises on all aspects of rescues and reconstructions and has extensive experience in insolvency and corporate reconstruction law, both contentious and non-contentious. He has acted for a broad range of clients, including banks, insolvency practitioners, debtors and creditors. Recently an increased proportion of his work has been for distressed investors reviewing strategic options.

Pierre-Régis Dukmedjian

Partner

Piers Summerfield

Piers is a partner in the capital markets group, which forms part of the financial markets department. He has significant experience in international capital markets work, both equity and debt, with a particular focus in recent years on equity-linked transactions. His experience has included advising issuers and underwriters on a wide range of debt and equity capital markets work including straight bonds, convertible and exchangeable bonds, Euro Medium Term Note Programmes and Euro Commercial Paper Programmes, GDRs and liability management transactions. His experience has covered a broad range of jurisdictions, including most parts of Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Japan, Australia and Canada.

Pollyanna Deane

Pollyanna is a partner in the international insurance group in London and leads the team which won the Legal Business Awards "Insurance Team of the Year 2014". She specialises in advising insurance companies and, unusually, advises both life and general insurers on the many aspects of their business. These include business transfers, attributions of inherited estates, mergers and acquisitions, reorganisations, demutualisations and joint ventures. She has been extensively involved in Solvency II projects for both capital management purposes and business preparation. Pollyanna covers the development of new products (including health trusts and financial reinsurance) for insurers, reinsurers and other financial institutions. She has considerable experience in working with service providers, intermediaries, discretionary mutuals and warranty providers covering all regulatory aspects of their business as well as their distribution and marketing arrangements.

Richard Dyton

Richard Dyton is a partner in the projects group specialising in infrastructure projects and construction law in the UK and internationally. Richard leads both the waste management and construction groups within the firm and co-ordinates the firm’s PFI/PPP activities. Richard’s recent experience includes: advising SNC-Lavalin on its contractual arrangements for the Ambatovy Mining Project; leading the team advising MVV Umwelt GmbH in relation to the energy from waste CHP facility at Plymouth Royal Dockyard; advising Viridor in relation to its successful bid for the South London Waste Partnership’s residual waste treatment contract; and advising Becton Dickinson on its construction of new plant and facilities.

Richard Hopkinson-Woolley

Richard is a partner in the Real Estate team with a broad practice across investment and development work and with experience of all main sectors. His work often includes multi-disciplinary teams, given the financing, tax and structuring requirements of clients. He has over 10 years' experience of putting together complex transactions involving commercial ground leases, including ground-up development using ground lease investment as part of the capital stack.

Richard Bunce

Richard is a partner in the London finance litigation group and also a member of the firm’s crime, fraud and investigations group. He is a specialist in contentious matters arising in the banking, debt capital markets and financial services industry sectors. His practice involves advising on a wide range of legal issues and he has considerable experience of dealing with a broad range of complex, high-value commercial disputes and problems. His practice has a strong international focus. Richard also undertakes regulatory investigations. The client base Richard works with is predominantly financial institutions. These principally comprise of investment banks and commercial banks, and also include trust corporations, investment managers and other financial services providers. Richard is recognised as an expert in banking litigation and claimant fraud.

Richard Perry

Richard is involved in transactional, advisory and regulatory work for asset managers and other businesses operating in the financial services sector. He is an investment funds specialist advising on funds of all types and the promotion of investment products, especially hedge funds.

Richard Sims

Richard is a partner in the finance litigation department and is a member of the firm’s crime, fraud & investigation group. He specialises in contentious financial services work, both domestic and international. He has extensive experience of regulatory investigations, enforcement and disputes, in particular those involving the FSA.

Richard McKeown

Richard's experience covers most areas of banking and finance law, including domestic and cross-border financing, trade and export finance, capital market issues, secured and tax-structured financing and asset acquisition and general corporate financing. He is particularly experienced in the financing and commercial aspects of projects in Asia, having represented borrowers, sponsors and lenders in infrastructure, transport, energy, telecommunications and petrochemical projects, many of which required multi-source financing from domestic and international banks as well as from export credit and multilateral agencies. Richard has advised on the Hong Kong aspects of many bank mergers and reorganisations, including The Royal Bank of Scotland plc, Korea Exchange Bank, Hana Bank, Kookmin Bank and Bank Bumiputra Malaysia Berhad.

Rolfe Hayden

Rolfe is the national practice group head of financial markets in Hong Kong. He has extensive experience in all types of collective investment schemes, including ETFs, hedge funds, private equity funds, guaranteed funds and listed investment companies. He has advised on offshore closed and open ended corporates, units trusts and limited partnerships as well as licensing, regulatory and securities issues connected with asset management generally in Hong Kong and Asia. Rolfe also has experience in bank regulation under the Banking Ordinance, mergers by way of private ordinance, SFC licensing issues as well as disclosure of interests under the Securities and Futures Ordinance.

Ross Miller

Ross is a restructuring and finance lawyer who acts for banks, funds and corporates on a wide range of cross-border restructuring and banking transactions. His practice particularly focuses on restructurings, distressed financings, distressed debt investment and analysis, and loan, bond and claim trading. Ross is an active member of the Loan Market Association’s secondary documentation committee, which prepares, reviews and updates the market standard documentation used throughout the European loan market for par and distressed debt trading.

Sandra Esquiva-Hesse

Partner

Sarah Bailey

Sarah specialises in soft IP and is responsible for the day to day running of the Paris Intellectual Property Department. She advises on all the aspects involved in the creation, exploitation and protection of trademarks, design rights, copyrights and domain names and is also well versed on the issues relating to unfair competition, dealing with both contentious and non-contentious matters. Sarah also deals with data protection and advertising matters.

Sarah Berkeley

Sarah has extensive experience of advising financial institutions, asset managers and major corporations on employment law issues. She advises on all aspects of the employment relationship, including drafting employment contracts and staff handbooks, bonus and incentive arrangements, negotiated terminations, strategic issues associated with reorganisations and restructuring, discrimination and harassment, employment disputes, restrictive covenants and the employment aspects of data privacy.

Scott Parker

Scott specialises in contentious and non-contentious intellectual property generally, with a strong emphasis on patent litigation in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. He has considerable experience of defending the patents of research based pharmaceutical companies against attack by their generic competitors and coordinating with the legal teams in other jurisdictions. He has also advised on patent disputes in other industry sectors and in proceedings for design right infringement and misuse of confidential information. Scott is regularly instructed to give patent validity and infringement opinions and also advises clients on licensing and other commercial agreements.

Sean Bulmer

Sean is a partner in the capital markets group. He advises on securitised and OTC derivatives transactions as well as SPV structured finance transactions. He advises on a range of complex securitised derivatives including notes, warrants and certificates, as well as repackaging transactions and fiduciary note structures. The underlying references for which include equity, fund, and commodity derivatives as well as physical assets. He has established numerous issuance programmes (both consolidated and non-consolidated programmes). He advises on the retail offering of structured products across Europe, including asset backed securities and leads the firm’s retail structured products group. Sean was based in Hong Kong from 1997 to 2005 and has extensive experience of Asian and emerging market capital market transactions. He is the co-chair of the firm’s China Growth Markets Group.

Simon Gardiner

Simon is a partner in our Real Estate department. He has considerable experience in all aspects of commercial real estate. This includes mixed use, residential, student accomodation, office and retail led development and mainstream investment work. The nature of his practice means that he regularly leads large multi-disciplinary transactions often involving complex joint venture structures, forward funding arrangements, significant pre-lets and high value sales and purchases. He is an expert in housing led development, having worked for the leading stakeholders in this Sector throughout his career.

Simon Hilditch

Simon is a partner in the international insurance litigation and professional risk group. He defends claims (pre-action, litigated and in arbitrations) both in the UK and overseas on behalf of insurers and insured pursuant to the provisions of financial institutions, professional liability insurance and reinsurance products, and directors and officers policies. His practice also includes advising on the drafting, construction and operation of such policies.

Simon Kildahl

Simon is a partner in the Simmons & Simmons banking group, which forms part of the financial markets department. He specialises in all aspects of real estate finance, having experience in domestic and international finance. Simon advises on senior, mezzanine and equity structures in real estate, hotel, healthcare and education financings. He acts on a wide range of financings, ranging from construction finance, syndicated, securitised debt for the private sector, to bond finance for housing associations.

Simon Middleton

Simon is a partner in the banking group, which forms part of the financial markets department. He has extensive experience of advising both banks and borrowers on a wide variety of banking transactions throughout the UK, Eastern and Western Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. His main specialist areas are acquisition finance (both public bids and leveraged acquisitions), syndicated and bilateral lending, structured financings and debt restructurings, as well as other general banking work. Simon has acted for a wide range of financial institutions, including Barclays, HSBC, RBS, BNP Paribas, SEB, Standard Bank and Bank of America; as well as borrowers such as Telefónica, Southern Cross Healthcare, HMV Group and MJ Gleeson.

Simon Watson

Simon is international head of employment and leads a number of teams advising major city financial institutions and international corporations. Simon has considerable experience of advising on all aspects of the employment relationship, including advising on the strategic issues associated with reorganisations and restructuring. Simon has significant expertise as a litigator advising in relation to both Employment Tribunal and High Court disputes, including applying for interlocutory relief and injunctions.

Stephanie Featherstone

Stephanie is a Managing Associate in the firm’s Corporate group. She specialises in M&A, joint ventures, corporate reorganisations and fundraisings. Her particular expertise is in complex cross-border M&A.

Stephen Gentle

Stephen specialises in assisting corporate and individual clients in complex fraud and financial regulatory matters, frequently with multi-jurisdictional aspects. He has particular expertise in advising in anti-bribery compliance, investigations and proceedings (generally with an overseas focus) and Financial Conduct Authority matters (with a particular emphasis on insider dealing, market misconduct and international regulatory issues). Stephen is also experienced in money laundering prevention, investigations and prosecutions (he is a member of the Law Society Money Laundering Task Force). He has expertise in Office of Fair Trading cartel investigations and he advises in Environment Agency investigations. His international criminal practice covers extradition proceedings, sanctions breaches and mutual legal assistance requests where he acts for individuals, corporations and governments. Alongside his fraud practice he has extensive experience in advising members of government and law enforcement agencies in sensitive enquiries where independent expertise in criminal law is required. Stephen also has expertise in the criminal aspects of the restraint and recovery of the proceeds of crime both in its domestic and cross-border aspects.

Stuart Dutson

Head of Simmons International Arbitration Group.

Thierry Gontard

Thierry specialises in corporate finance with a particular focus on stock exchange and financial markets, in particular public takeovers, initial public offerings, listings on Euronext and rights issues. He also has an extensive knowledge of finance litigation with a specific experience in the area of judicial and disciplinary proceedings before French courts and market regulators in connection with alleged breaches of stock exchange regulations and white collar crimes. He advises investment banks, insurance companies and public companies on mergers and acquisitions transactions, capital markets work (equity) and has been involved in privatisations.

Thierry Somma

Partner

Tim Wass

Tim supports corporate clients on IPOs, public fundraisings, public and private mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructurings and general corporate advisory issues. He specialises in particular on public securities transactions, and advise public companies listed on both AIM and the Main Market (and their NOMADS and sponsors). He also acts for bidders, targets and financial advisers in public M&A deals, and have advised a number of target shareholders on strategic and procedural issues during public M&A bid processes.

Tim Boyce

Tim is a partner in the finance litigation group that is part of the firm’s dispute resolution practice. He is a specialist in advising financial institutions in connection with regulatory investigations, disputes and fraud claims. His practice covers a wide range of regulatory and legal issues, usually involving complex financial products or cross border elements. The client base Tim works with principally comprises banks, investment intermediaries, investment managers and other regulated entities.

Tom Fricke

Tom is a Managing Associate in the firm’s Corporate group in London. He specialises in mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures, minority investments, partnership arrangements and reorganisations. Tom has a particular focus on the asset management sector, advising leading financial institutions, hedge funds, infrastructure funds, sovereign wealth funds and pensions funds on complex (often multi-jurisdictional) transactions.

Tom Wheadon

Tom is head of the firm’s international information, communications and technology practice. He advises a wide range of clients within the TMT, finanical institutions, and asset management and investment funds sectors, and has been the client partner for clients such as Avaya, Equinix, Sitel, Riyad Bank, Truphone, Verizon and Virgin Media in many cases for over a decade. He specialises in the law, regulation and policy of telecommunications, satellite, media, the internet and e-commerce. Recent work highlights include advising on the UK’s 4G spectrum auction, Truphone on the £70m investment by Roman Abramovich, network and data centre sharing for various clients, new UK telecoms network builds (PCCW/UK Broadband’s 4G network and CityFibre Holdings’ FTTH network in ‘second cities’), orbital slots for Reliance Globalcom and others, on a wide range of data centre matters from a Moscow market entrance by IXcellerate to Middle East and European expansion for Equinix, on the development of SaaS by companies such as Webpuzzle, Hullomail, Theomobex and Kewill, on the application of cleantech to the TMT and other industries for companies such as Highview, and advising numerous MVNO businesses, from established players on International Money Transfer services to advising start-ups targeting niche markets, as well as fundraising to continue growth and development. Tom is quoted in The Legal 500 2011 as a ‘telecoms guru’ and in Chambers 2012 as ‘a pleasure to work with’.

Tom Fyfe

Tom is a partner in the dispute resolution group. He has 20 years of experience of commercial litigation, contentious regulatory and arbitration in China, England & Wales and Australia, during which time he has advised clients in numerous high value and business-critical disputes. Tom has particular experience in disputes relating to mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, financial products and services, fraud and breach of trust, and accountants’ liability. He has worked across various client industry sectors including finance, professional services, telecommunications, television, IT, energy and sport.

Vikki Leitch

Vikki is a supervising associate in the intellectual property department and has experience of both contentious and non-contentious areas of intellectual property law. Vikki’s work focuses on trade mark registration, opposition, revocation and clearance and registered trade mark, passing-off, copyright and design law disputes and advice. Vikki advises and acts for clients in a wide variety of industries, including media, fashion and finance.

Yongmei Cai

Yongmei is a partner in the financial markets group in Beijing. She specialises in banking, cross-border finance, derivatives, debt capital markets and financial regulatory work. She has more than 18 years’ experience of advising major international and local financial institutions, commercial corporations and equity investors on corporate finance, commodity and trade finance, project finance, acquisition and leverage finance, mergers and acquisitions, syndicated lending, debt and corporate restructurings, compliance, structured finance, derivatives and structured products. In recent years, when assisting international finance institutions, she has focused on cross-border structured trade and commodities finance transactions. Extremely knowledgeable and experienced on 1) security on PRC assets; and 2)PRC commodity and foreign exchange regulatory issues, her team has a leading reputation in advising clients on China related cross-border transactions by combing its experience on international STCF business standards with PRC local laws and regulations. Throughout her finance practice, she also has been assisting major Chinese finance institutions and corporate clients in their outbound financing and investments. She has been actively involved in RMB internationalisation development.

Yves Baratte

Yves heads the Paris Office energy, natural resources and infrastructure projects team. He advises international corporate clients, funds, financial institutions and governments on the most complex power, water, natural resources (mining and oil & gas) and infrastructure projects internationally with a particular focus on France and North and Sub-Saharan Africa. He regularly speaks at energy and natural resources conferences in France and internationally.

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