About

Team size: 4
Major law firms used: Clifford Chance, Latham & Watkins, Macfarlanes, Ropes & Gray, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Slaughter and May, Taylor Wessing, Travers Smith

The well-known former Travers Smith partner Charles Barter – who helped co-found the law firm’s highly rated private equity team in 1996 – took his impressive buyout track record to Bridgepoint to become its first GC in 2008.

The position advertised by the private equity investor was too good to turn down: ‘I knew I had to take it – I just knew that having a shot at another career after nearly 25 years at Travers Smith wouldn’t come around again.’

A year before his in-house move, he led Travers when it advised Bridgepoint on its £360m capture of fashion retailer FatFace. Now, he is waiting for Bridgepoint’s latest acquisition – of Portuguese water distributor Miya – to complete, while the company crafts a 100-day business plan for the new addition.

Among several high-profile deals Barter has worked on in his 11 years at Bridgepoint, the one everybody always mentions is the sale of Pret a Manger last year to investment firm JAB, with a reported price tag of £1.5bn. ‘It was obviously amazing to buy and sell such a high-quality business and recognised brand’, but he stresses that over time his role at the company has become less deal focused, and more connected to the internal management and regulatory side of the business, as well as its fundraising activities.

‘I was on the phone on a transaction at about 11 o’clock at night recently, but that’s only because a question came up that required my input. Most of the time, I’m working on internal management and regulation – because we do a lot of M&A, we have to be really careful about sanctions and anti-bribery.’

Right now he is working on making Bridgepoint compliant with the Senior Managers and Certification Regime – regulation designed to strengthen market integrity and grow accountability in financial services.

He describes himself as ‘hands-on but not overly controlling’ in the workplace and his best advice to aspiring lawyers is to be yourself. ‘I’ve always tried not to pretend to be the same as other people who I admire because you can only be yourself – of course you can learn from them, but you really are just who you are.’