About

Team size: 15

What were the most important transactions and litigations that you’ve been involved with, during the last year?

Rather than an individual transaction, it has to be how we took charge of the Covid-19 response. I would say that from a global perspective, we took charge of it and implemented a dozen different things within that first week which were absolutely essential for the company’s successful handling of the crisis. We have 300 or so portfolio companies, who we immediately provided a template and procedure pack for. Right after that, we pushed out packages of key tools for the Board, including Board minutes, ways to consider the impact and response and all aspects of how Covid-19 would affect the business. As the material we produced grew, we put this into a dedicated platform and weekly newsletter, and provided a hotline for portfolio companies to use.

This not only allowed them to get the best legal advice available immediately, but also allowed us to track what and where the issues were cropping up. We established a tracking tool that monitored the financial strength of our portfolio companies and also which were, for instance, able to access government support.

We also helped lead market dislocation strategies with the capital markets team, such as credit for facility relief, debt by that liability management restructuring and, lastly but perhaps most importantly, we helped a number of our portfolio companies actually begin to transform their businesses to manufacture PPE.

The Covid-19 response, especially the first six to seven months of it, was the key driver for our team this year. In terms of investments, our tech fund was busier than ever, especially in the healthcare sector.

Has Brexit affected your business relationships with others, especially those that have ties to Europe?

I think that the supply chain issues caused are well documented, and I think our portfolio companies have done a great job in overcoming those hurdles. Thanks to a lot of hard work ahead of time to put ourselves in the best position possible to continue without being affected, we dealt with the issues as best as we could.

That said, much of Brexit remains to be seen. I think the UK has a really unique opportunity, but I hope they’re able to capitalise on it.

What would you say have been the biggest lessons from the past 12 months?

If you’re putting your personnel first and foremost, everything else will follow. This is an old maxim that has proved to be absolutely true over the past year. We’ve seen that when you do what’s best for our employees, everything else follows. While it’s been difficult, it’s been an amazing year in a lot of ways.