Mark Coker – Chief legal officer, Lone Star
Year of qualification: 1990
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, 1998-2008
Vinson & Elkins, 2008-15
Hudson Advisors, 2016-17
Lone Star Europe Acquisitions, 2018-present
Why did you want to become a private equity lawyer?
My career in private practice largely pre-dated the concept of being a private equity lawyer. My background has always been in finance, doing a range of financing transactions across different sectors and a range of clients, which turned out to be a great foundation for working with private equity firms and the wide variety of investments that they consider.
What has been the most memorable moment or deal of your in-house career?
That is Lone Star’s investment in Novobanco, a large commercial bank based in Portugal which had been created by the Portuguese central bank in their resolution process for Banco Espírito Santo. The investment process took over 18 months to get to closing. After complex negotiations with the Portuguese state for the investment, we then sought clearance from a range of financial and market regulators, including DG (Comp), the ECB and local European regulators as well as the regulatory authorities in several other countries where the business was located. We also designed a new governance structure for the bank that was novel in the Portuguese market and in which I ended up as a participant as a non-executive board member.
Which sectors are you expecting to drive activity this year?
Lone Star is an opportunistic investor and activity is heavily influenced by the markets in the relevant sectors and geographies. For the real estate business, I expect we will remain active in the UK, Scandinavia, Germany and Austria for both direct real estate investments and structured debt transactions. For the corporate side of the business, activity levels remain high, continuing Lone Star’s strong track record with corporate carve-out transactions and more opportunities for secondary private equity transactions where older funds are seeking to divest their portfolio company investments.
Why would you recommend a career working in private equity?
Private equity is a very broad church which covers many firms of different sizes as well as multiple investment strategies and asset classes. The sector now deals with a wide range of legal and regulatory matters, which gives in-house lawyers lots of opportunities, wide responsibilities, scope to participate in more sectors and industries than most other comparable positions, in an environment where teams are typically still quite small and each individual lawyer has a high-profile and measurable impact on the success of the business.
