Eleven advisers including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, DLA Piper, Pinsent Masons and Addleshaw Goddard have won spots on the inaugural panel for the recently merged Dixons Carphone.
Clyde & Co, DAC Beachcroft, Fieldfisher, Shoosmiths, employment firm Doyle Clayton, Worthingtons and Woffinden Legal founder David Woffinden have also been granted positions on the new roster, which will run for three years.
The panel, which concluded in February, was run by general counsel (GC) and company secretary Nigel Paterson who replaced the interim joint-GC team of Helen Grantham and Tim Morris in April 2015. Grantham and Morris previously occupied the top legal positions at Dixons and Carphone Warehouse respectively after the £3.8bn merger in 2014 which created an electrical retail giant that brought household names including Currys and PC World under one umbrella.
A Dixons Carphone spokesperson said: ‘The appointment of this panel places us in great shape to support the combined business and its future growth. We’re delighted to maintain relationships with a number of firms we’ve worked with for many years, while also establishing new relationships.’
In a surprising move, neither Osborne Clarke (OC) nor Linklaters, which advised on the merger, are included on the list of panel firms.
At the time OC capitalised on its longstanding relationship with Carphone Warehouse to secure a role on the merger with Dixons, with corporate partner Jonathan King leading for the firm.
OC had a relationship with Carphone Warehouse for well over a decade and has advised on most of its major mandates. For instance, King advised the company on its conditional £500m acquisition of the remaining 50% of its Best Buy joint venture in April 2013.
For the merger, Linklaters advised Dixons Retail, led by corporate partner Aedamar Comiskey, while Freshfields advised Carphone Warehouse on the financing for the deal, led by partner Sean Lacey.
Prior to his move to Dixons Carphone, Paterson was GC and manager of the governance and compliance at BT Consumer Legal and had been with the company since 2000. He trained at Linklaters and had previously served as legal counsel at ExxonMobil International.
kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk
