England - London • Investment fund formation and management

Macfarlanes LLP

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Macfarlanes LLP stands out for its strength in advising on high value fundraisings in relation to credit and special situation funds. Growth and impact funds are also areas of expertise for the team, with the firm’s cross-practice ESG group being a key feature of its offering. Practice head Stephen Ross, who joined the firm from Sidley Austin LLP in January 2023, specialises in advising on structuring private equity, venture capital and infrastructure funds. Robinson is supported by the ‘highly professional, responsive and thoughtful’ Harriet Miller, as well as Sam Brooks, a specialist in credit funds. Christopher Good and Alexander Amos are also key names within the team. The firm further strengthened its bench with the addition of Peter Chapman as a partner in September 2023, also from Sidley.

Legal 500 Editorial commentary

Testimonials

Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.

  • ‘Good reliable and knowledgeable people.’

  • ‘Thoughtful and don't panic easily. There is always a solution and the team have helped me find it.’

  • ‘MacFarlanes team occupies a superb niche position. They have proved to retained and developed a lot of clients even without their own US offering. They are a class act, both associates and partners.’

  • ‘We use Macfarlanes as our legal advisor across multiple funds - the approach and values of the team that we work with match our own and we find working with the team to be straightforward, with prompt advice.’

  • ‘Harriet Miller is our go to partner for all fund related matters and she generally operates as our gateway into other work streams as we find her to be highly professional, responsive and thoughtful as well as approachable.’

  • ‘We have worked with Harriet Miller and Stephen Robinson for a number of years on a number of fundraisings and ancillary matters. Their work is consistently of an extremely high quality and delivered efficiently. The advice we receive is thorough and commercially focused.’

Key clients

  • Synova
  • Hayfin
  • abrdn
  • 17Capital
  • CBPE
  • Muzinich & Co
  • Cross Ocean
  • Alcentra
  • ECI
  • Northern Gritstone

Work highlights

  • Advising Synova on its firth round which closed at its hard cap of £875m.
  • Advising Asper investment management Limited on its launch of a new sustainable UK infrastructure fund.
  • Advising abrdn on its latest real estate debt fund, CRED II, which held a closing of £205m.

Lawyers

Leading individuals

Christopher Good

Christopher Good

Macfarlanes LLP

Christopher advises on private fund formation, looking after fund sponsors who are establishing and operating private investment funds. He advises across a range of asset classes, including private equity, credit, real estate, venture capital and growth and secondary capital.  As well as advising on fundraisings, Christopher also advises upon and helps structure and implement carried interest, co-invest and other executive incentive schemes. Christopher also regularly advises secondary purchasers and GP clients on secondary transactions, including portfolio transactions, liquidity solutions and fund recapitalisations and restructurings. He is also regularly asked to advise institutional clients on their primary investment programmes, co-investment operations and bespoke management arrangements with managers. Christopher has previously spent time on secondment with both Goldman Sachs and Legal & General Investment Management.  He is a member of the Association of Partnership Practitioners and participates in Invest Europe’s working groups on legal and regulatory affairs.

Practice head

The lawyer(s) leading their teams.

Stephen Ross

Other key lawyers

Harriet Miller, Christopher Good, Alexander Amos, Sam Brooks, Stephen Robinson