About

Team size: 30 (20 lawyers and ten non-legal professionals)

Major legal advisers: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Clifford Chance, Paul Hastings, Pinsent Masons, Gateley, Squire Patton Boggs, Centrefield

What are the most important transactions and litigations that you have been involved in during the last year?

City Football Group successfully defended a major regulatory litigation matter that had lasted 18 months. We negotiated and closed two M&A transactions – acquisitions of football clubs in Belgium and France – during the spring 2020 lockdown. All the due diligence and contract negotiations took place entirely via video, without any site visits or face to face meetings. Although it would have been preferable to have meet the sellers and seen the clubs being bought, we successfully proved the concept of remote deal making!

Has working from home inspired any innovation in terms of the way you/your team work? Are there any standout products or tech you now use that you never did before?

The members of the legal department will never spend the entirety of their week in the office ever again. Remote working has proved successful and popular, although everyone would of course like more social interaction. I do worry about the junior lawyers in the team, though, particularly our trainee solicitor and our paralegal. Indeed, the apprentice-like nature of legal traineeship involves much learning by osmosis from seniors, which cannot be fully replicated remotely.

In light of the loss of stadium attendance and ticket sales due to Covid, how have you been able to safeguard the clubs in your network against this?

The financial consequences of empty stadia have been difficult for the entire industry. We are fortunate to be a well-capitalised organisation, but we took prudent measures to ensure we were able to weather the storm without making any redundancies or furloughs.

How positively do you view the Brexit withdrawal agreement and are there any areas that you think future agreements should pay attention to?

Brexit has led to changes for the business, particularly in the ability to recruit the key assets for Manchester City FC: football players. EU passport holders can no longer work freely in the UK and are subject to the same visa conditions as those from any other country. The changes bring many opportunities, though, and we have spent the four and a half years it took from the referendum to actual Brexit planning carefully to ensure the business would not be unduly impeded.