England - London • Corporate and commercial

2

Venture capital

Shoosmiths LLP

More informationMore information

Led from Birmingham by the ‘excellent’ Alastair Peet but operating very much as a unified national practice with other key resources in Reading and London, Shoosmiths LLP provides ’sensible, actionable and practical advice’ to an increasingly balanced mix of investors and investees. Peet remains a popular choice among prominent fund clients, including Octopus Ventures, which benefit from his ‘very collaborative and consensual approach’ to transactional work as well as his intimate knowledge of the underlying documentation, having himself played a key role drafting and updating the model documents for the BVCA. Along with the ’knowledgeable and commercial’ Alastair Hammerton, who heads the Midlands corporate team, Peet has also been at the forefront of utilising document automation, AI review, and data analytics to deliver efficiencies and insights for clients. In London, the ‘very knowledgeable’ Steve Barnett is ’well connected in the venture capital market in Europe’, providing ‘very practical’ advice to his core company side roster, as well as a growing number of institutional investors on early stage funding. Other key members of the national team include Thames Valley-based corporate partner Sanjeev Sharma, whose work encompasses a significant amount of venture capital mandates; Reading-based tax partner Tom Wilde, who is a key resource on the crucial tax aspects associated with the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCT); and the ’excellent’ Helen Burnell, who leads the firm’s spHERe initiative to support female founders and venture capitalists. All named practitioners are based in Birmingham, unless otherwise noted.

Legal 500 Editorial commentary

Testimonials

Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.

  • 'Shoosmiths has an excellent corporate team with a broad depth of experience and expertise across the gambit, including tax.'
  • 'The team offers sensible, actionable and practical advice with a focus on concluding transactions as quickly and equitably as possible.'
  • 'Steve Barnett’s practical approach stands out against more theoretical or adversarial approaches.'
  • 'Steve Barnett is well connected in the venture capital market in Europe and used to dealing with founders and early stage firms.'
  • 'Alastair Hammerton is the most knowledgeable and commercial transaction lawyer I have worked with.'
  • 'Helen Burnell is excellent.'

Key clients

  • Octopus Ventures
  • Triple Point
  • Bonnier Ventures
  • Blackfinch Ventures
  • Intrepid Owls (t/a Restless)
  • Hambro Perks
  • Mercia Asset Management and Oxford Capital
  • Foresight Group
  • Downing LLP
  • Mercia Asset Management
  • Electric Sea Racing Limited
  • Big Green Smile Limited
  • Pentech Ventures, Outward VC, West Loop Ventures (USA), Pi Labs
  • Par Equity
  • AP Ventures Fund II GP LLP
  • JamJar Ventures LLP
  • Clean Growth Fund
  • Pi Labs
  • Hoxton Ventures
  • Cantab Research t/a Speechmatics

Work highlights

  • Advising Speechmatics on its $62m Series B fundraising led by US investor Susquehanna Growth Equity.
  • Advising a consortium of four major institutional investors on their exit from Vauban to American tech giant Carta Inc.
  • Advising Triple Point’s on the sale of its holding in Credit Kudos to Apple in a deal worth $150m.

Lawyers

Leading individuals

Steve Barnett

Steve Barnett

Shoosmiths LLP

Steve is a partner in the corporate team at Shoosmiths specialising in advising companies and investors on venture and growth capital investments, mergers and acquisitions and other corporate transactions, mainly in the technology sector. Prior to joining Shoosmiths in March 2017 Steve was a member of the Technology Companies Group in the London office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, where he regularly completed 20 - 30 investment and other transactions per annum. Examples include: Acting for a money transfer service provider on its series A and series B investment rounds which raised around $140m in aggregate. Acting for a machine learning company on its significant series A investment round. Acting for a company in the online advertising sector on its series seed and series A investment rounds. Acting for a US-headquartered fintech impact investor on various investment rounds. Acting for a UK-focussed institutional seed investor on various investment rounds. Acting on numerous angel investment rounds. Acting for a cloud services provider on its sale to private equity.

Next Generation Partners

Helen Burnell

Helen Burnell

Shoosmiths LLP

Helen is a Partner in our corporate department specialising in venture capital, growth capital and sustainable and next generation infrastructure investments. Helen advises both institutions and companies/founders on start-up through funding rounds and M&A. Helen works with a variety of clients but increasingly specialises helping investors and companies on capital fund raisings: Recent experience includes: • advising EV Chargers (EVC) on its £165m investment from Denham Capital • advising Equitix on its  £75m investments into Grain Connect and £84m into Freedom Fibre • advising Gresham House Sustainable Infrastructure Fund on its continued investment into Go Fibre, Telcom Group and Wildanet Limited • advising Gresham House Ventures on various investments such as into Panthera BioPartners, Metrion BioSciences, Dayrize and Airfinity • advising Foresight Group LLP on its investment into F&W Network Limited • advising Burda Principal investments on its further investment into Bloom & Wilde Limited as part of its £75 million Series D fundraising led by General Catalyst and Index Ventures • advising Carbon Quota on its seed series led by Codex Captial Helen also leads on Shoosmiths spHERe initiative – our network supporting female founders and venture capitalists within the VC space. Open to all women and men, founders or venture capitalists spHERe’s goal is help women to be successful through creating a forum for more meaningful networking opportunities within the VC space and to help address the disparities that exist between female and male entrepreneurs.

Practice head

The lawyer(s) leading their teams.

Alastair Peet

Other key lawyers

Steve Barnett, Sanjeev Sharma, Tom Wilde, Dan Sharman, Anna Robson, Helen Burnell, Alistair Hammerton, Adam Leszczynsk, Charlotte Cannell, Gregg Harris, Kat Hornsby

© 2024 Legalease Ltd. All rights reserved

Registered company in England & Wales No. 2423756 VAT 324572722

Registered address: 188 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AG