Alphas revisited: Private equity stars

Victoria Sigeti, Freshfields

Legal Business first named Freshfields’ Victoria Sigeti a rising star in 2016 while only a year into partnership. Judging by the sheer volume of plaudits she receives for her work in the most competitive product line in City law, she has now well and truly, well… risen.

‘Very talented with a phenomenal deal sheet and great clients,’ extols one male M&A partner at a US rival of Sigeti, whose recent matters include acting for longstanding client General Atlantic on its $150m strategic investment in Odoo and General Atlantic’s climate fund, BeyondNetZero, on its minority investment in ABB E-mobility.

And crucially, Sigeti has also managed to maintain something of a relationship with Cinven, after relationship partner Adrian Maguire’s 2019 defection to Kirkland & Ellis threatened to destabilise the Freshfields connection.

And it speaks volumes that her proponents are themselves top flight. Mike Francies, Weil’s influential London managing partner, calls Sigeti ‘very impressive’, while another rainmaker at a US firm recognises her as ‘a proper, proper lawyer’. Endorses Kirkland deal star David Higgins: ‘Victoria is a true leader of the PE team at Freshfields and is hugely respected across the PE industry for her client relationships and deals.’

Sigeti reflects on the importance of authenticity: ‘One of the main challenges I have had to overcome is learning to believe in myself. Accepting that I don’t have to have the same style as everyone else to be effective, has been a challenge to overcome in my own head, rather than one anyone else has presented.’

Farah O’Brien, Latham & Watkins

‘She is one of the few senior women deal-leaders and has the ability to run very large deals,’ observes one buyout heavyweight.

Farah O’Brien wins kudos from numerous peers, not only for breaking the glass ceiling to become corporate co-chair of Latham in London, but for being a formidable practitioner, as proven by her recognition as a leading individual for premium M&A in The Legal 500.

She points to a career-defining moment, advising Silver Lake on its $200m investment in New Zealand’s iconic All Blacks rugby team. ‘Those transactions are notoriously difficult to negotiate,’ O’Brien says. ‘They involve lots of stakeholders with differing requirements, so negotiating while keeping all the stakeholders on board is a challenge.’

Skadden London head Rich Youle’s review of O’Brien is characteristically no-nonsense: ‘She gets the deal done.’

‘Top of the market,’ agrees Willkie’s Claire McDaid, herself a premier operator and business-builder.

A trainee and associate at Freshfields, O’Brien joined Latham in 2005 and made partner in 2016. She is frank about the pressures of starting a family while trying to make partner. ‘I took a year off for each child, so having to rebuild my confidence and my practice, plus coming back to the office to find the world had moved on without me, as well as finding the energy to do it all, was quite challenging,’ O’Brien notes.

She credits flexible working arrangements for allowing her to progress her career while managing the demands of small children and cites Covid-enforced working from home as a leveller: ‘The pandemic was good for me as I no longer felt like the odd one out.’

O’Brien is by no means the only top female talent at Latham. Private equity and M&A partner Linzi Thomas garners praise from peers.

Boasting an enviable list of clients that includes CVC Capital Partners and The Carlyle Group, Thomas has achieved much since being made up in 2019.

Declares one peer at a rival US firm of Thomas: ‘A sterling lawyer and a star of the future. Actually, she’s already a star!’

Katja Butler, Skadden

‘Sometimes I am my own biggest challenge,’ ruminates Skadden’s UK corporate co-head Katja Butler, echoing the sentiment of numerous women interviewed for this piece. ‘Women seem to doubt themselves and their abilities much more than men.’

It seems Butler has gone from strength to strength since her high-profile hire from White & Case alongside Rich Youle in 2018, with an impressive roster of clients including Hg, Silver Lake and JAB Holdings. She views Pret A Manger’s acquisition of EAT as a watershed moment: ‘That deal cemented my relationship with the JAB team.’ She also highlights acting for Hg as lead investor on its $5.3bn buyout of Visma: ‘That was a complicated deal from a legal perspective, but I liked working with every representative of the consortium members. It was a very collegiate transaction.’

A male peer at a rival firm is suitably impressed: ‘Straightforward, pragmatic and commercial. A pleasure to deal with and gets the job done,’ he says of Butler.

Sara Pickersgill, Kirkland & Ellis

‘I was told by one teacher that children from state schools don’t go to Cambridge,’ says Sara Pickersgill, the former Allen & Overy (A&O) infrastructure co-head whose hire by Kirkland earlier this year grabbed headlines. ‘Roll forward ten years and I faced, what felt like, similar analogous conversations about promotion to partnership.’

Pickersgill counts advising 3i Infrastructure on its $512m acquisition of Global Cloud Xchange while at A&O among her career highlights. ‘Operating in 40 jurisdictions and their associated regulatory frameworks, plus some thorny transactional issues, made it a very complex deal to get over the line in a short space of time,’ she explains.

Pickersgill lambasts the assumption by many that women will give up on their career to prioritise family life: ‘Regardless of gender, the job is difficult.’

George Knighton, Skadden’s co-head of UK corporate, assesses: ‘Sara skillfully deploys her 20 years of experience in the infrastructure sector, covering regulatory regimes, concession and partnership agreements and multi-tiered shareholder consortium arrangements. She is able to distill all those issues into savvy commercial strategy and astute auction tactics, to deliver success to her clients.’

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