Year of qualification: 2006
Travers Smith, 2006-10
Barclays Capital, 2010-13
GIC, 2013-present
Why did you want to become a private equity lawyer?
I trained at Travers Smith – I had the time of my life as a trainee and junior lawyer in the private equity team. Continue reading “‘I had the time of my life as a trainee at Travers’ – GIC’s Jarlath Pratt”
Year of qualification: 1999
White & Case, 2001-05
D.B. Zwirn & Co, 2005-10
Charterhouse, 2010-present
Why did you want to become a private equity lawyer?
I didn’t really – I originally wanted to be a journalist but once I did law, I was very keen to go in-house and get closer to the business. Continue reading “‘There are many memorable moments that that can’t be shared’ – Charterhouse GC Tom Patrick”
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.
Year of qualification: 2009
Columbia Law School, 1995-98
Cravath, Swaine & Moore, 1998-2005
Citi, 2005-11
Silver Lake, 2011-19
Apollo Global Management, 2019-present
I started my career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. It was a deliberate choice – I had thought I’d work somewhere more international, but ended up picking Cravath because of its reputation in dealmaking and M&A. Also, it famously has a rotation system where you move from practice to practice every 12-18 months. It meant you became a well-rounded lawyer. Continue reading “‘I liken myself to an octopus with many tentacles in different places’ – Apollo’s Seda Yalçinkaya”
Restructuring partners have been predicting a surge in corporate restructurings and insolvencies for years. But despite Covid, conflict and rising inflation the boom in such work has yet to materialise to any significant level.
Cameron Purse: Talk us through your professional journeys with AI, and generative AI in particular. When did it become a tangible part of your working lives?
After 14 years of Conservative rule, the Labour Party swept into power on 4 July 2024, setting the stage for transformative changes in UK employment law. Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay promises a bold agenda of reforms aimed at boosting worker protection, ensuring fair pay, and modernising workplace practices. These sweeping changes will have significant implications for employers across various sectors. But what do these reforms mean for employers and their in-house lawyers, and how can they stay ahead of the curve?
Continue reading “Labour and employment: what the new government means for workers’ rights”
‘The UK competition practice has been transformed by Brexit’ observes Nick Levy, a partner in Cleary Gottlieb’s London antitrust team.
It’s well documented that since the UK’s exit from the EU, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has embraced a position of intensified scrutiny, leading to parallel investigations and outcomes with the European Commission (EC). Continue reading “Antitrust renaissance: navigating deals amid agency crackdowns”
More than 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia first invaded in February 2022 according to the UN. And, as highlighted by this week’s airstrike on Kyiv, in which more than 40 people lost their lives, the war is far from over.
But despite the ongoing conflict, law firms in the country remain very much open to business. Continue reading “Working in a warzone”
