Corporate and M&A Summit 2024 – 14 Mar 2024

SPEAKERS

Hannah Williams-Skinner, working life manager, MoneyPenny

Hannah hit the ground running when she joined Moneypenny during the pandemic as Working Life Manager – and she hasn’t slowed down yet! With 10 years’ experience working within the hospitality and retail sectors in London as a People & Training Manager, she is a true and well-established people person.

Her role sees Hannah working with her own team, as well as other departments in the business, to provide HR support and advice for everyone who works for us at Moneypenny, covering all elements of the employee lifecycle. By liaising with key stakeholders and taking the time and care to build strong relationships with them, Hannah finds effective solutions to the team’s concerns and ensures every person and situation is treated with empathy and dignity.

As a well known, friendly face around the office, Hannah is the go-to person for all of our people, continuously championing the wellbeing of our teams and encouraging open conversations on mental health to help break the stigma.

Nisha Morjaria, director & head of business innovation, Talbots Law

With 23 years’ experience in Legal Service, Nisha has an ambition of delivering digital transformative change to enhance process and drive exceptional client services. Working with the Board of Director of a multi service law firm to develop innovation strategy roadmap to enable growth throughout the business. Dedicated to transforming the legal industry through innovative solutions and driving organisation success in a rapid evolving landscape. Nisha also heads up and oversees merges & acquisitions programme for the business.

Nick Atkins, partner, Stevens & Bolton

Nick is a highly experienced corporate partner who specialises in M&A, growth capital and corporate advisory work. He advises on mergers and acquisitions, private equity and growth capital work. Nick works across a number of sectors, with particular experience in technology, media, leisure and logistics businesses and cross-border transactions. He is a member of the firm’s international practice group, and is closely involved with many of the firm’s close international relationships, including in Iberia, Germany, US, Belgium and Singapore.

Iain Jamieson, board investor/advisor, Pep Talks

Iain has been working in private equity for over 20 years. Initially working for Inflexion as a Portfolio Director, Iain has subsequently held four CFO/COO roles of private equity backed businesses across a number of sectors backed by Bridgepoint, Towerbrook with the last two backed by Synova. Iain has had significant M&A and integration experience with his last two roles buy and build strategies that involved initially refinancing the respective businesses to provide the firepower to acquire 35 companies followed by their integration and collation for successful exit events.

Jenny Robertson, partner corporate M&A, Stevens & Bolton

Jenny is a highly experienced corporate lawyer who helps clients with a range of M&A, corporate advisory, equity investment and partnership projects. She has experience of advising on a range of corporate matters including sales and acquisitions, equity investments, MBOs, joint ventures, reorganisations and share incentives. She also specialises in partnership and LLP matters, including professional partnerships and investment structures. Jenny’s clients range from SMEs and high-growth businesses to investors and large corporate groups. She is the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion partner, leading internal projects to enhance and improve the firm’s performance and culture and sharing best practice internally and externally.

Gemma Legg, partner, RSM UK Corporate Finance LLP

Gemma heads-up the RSM UK’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) team across the Thames Valley and South Coast, working predominately with privately-owned businesses and interacting with lenders, private equity and international trade buyers to secure local deals.

She helps businesses of all shapes, sizes and sectors think about their future, shareholder aspirations and management ambitions. This typically involves raising money for growth (debt & equity), securing private equity investment, or finding a new home for the business.

Gemma also spearheads RSM UK’s national consumer M&A offering, supporting the origination and execution of deals in the industry across the country.

Jon Breger, partner, Gate One

Jon is a Partner at Gate One and M&A Lead. He has advised on, led and successfully delivered multiple complex M&A and transformation programmes. Jon’s M&A advisory expertise spans a range of areas from people aspects (culture, employee experience and change management) to operating model design and delivery to supporting global cross-functional integrations.

Henryk Feszczur, former GSK MA&D deal lead

Henryk is a seasoned M&A Implementation Leader with hands-on experience in over 50 transactions, ranging from £30 billion to £3 million, with global coverage. His M&A experience encompasses divestments, acquisitions, joint ventures and spin outs, spanning commercial, research and supply chain sectors

Babur Mirza, VP of Sales, Datasite

Babur Mirza is Senior VP of Sales for the UK at Datasite. A sales professional with over 20 years of experience in financial services and software sales, he has been successfully driving sales growth for Datasite since 2008. Based in London, he oversees the company’s UK Legal and Corporate Team. He works closely with Datasite’s product development team and clients to assess and deliver future technology requirements. He also serves as a mentor to junior team members and frequently speaks on the future of technology in M&A and diversity and inclusion issues in the sales and technology industries.

Tom Rose, partner, Macfarlanes

His practice encompasses public and private acquisitions and disposals, carve-outs, private capital, ECM situations and advisory mandates. Tom is recognised in Chambers & Partners and in The Legal 500 for UK premium public and private M&A.

Ashley Boonin, financial director, GoHenry

Ashley is the Finance Director for GoHenry. He started his career working for Ernst & Young before working in the investment world, latterly executing deals in the Fintech space. He has always been passionate about personal finance, running two personal finance blogs during his days at University, selling advertising space to fund nights out. When the opportunity came to join GoHenry, a company whose mission is to “make every kid smart with money” – the two were clearly a match made in heaven…and the rest is history.

Edward Waldron, head of private equity, partner, Taylor Wessing

Ed leads our Private Equity team. He acts for sponsors and their portfolio companies. Sponsor clients include August Equity, Graphite Capital, Rutland Partners and Caledonia Investments; portfolio companies he looks after include those owned by Silver Lake and Insight Partners.  

Ed also acts for founders and management teams, in particular those selling minority or majority stakes to institutional investors.

Ed’s practice is predominantly cross border, and while Ed transacts across most sectors his practice leverages our sector focus including tech and life sciences. His recent deals include acting for Graphite Capital on their investment into a medical devices buy and build platform and supplier to the NHS, and acting for AMCS, an Irish based portfolio company of Insight Partners, on their acquisition of pan European software platform Quentic gmbh.

Ed is described by clients in Legal 500 as “seeing the broader picture, pragmatic yet considered”.   

Ed co-chairs our “Balance in Business” committee, which promotes better female gender balance particularly in partnership and leadership roles.

Chris Lyes, CCO, Shieldpay

Chris is Chief Commercial Officer at Shieldpay the FCA regulated payments and escrow specialists that focus exclusively on the Legal Services sector providing the complete offering of KYC/KYB, safeguarding and disbursement domestically and across borders. Chris has over 25 years’ experience in financial services working in banking, investment management and payment services.

Karri Vuori, managing partner, IMAP

Karri is Managing Partner of IMAP UK and has around twenty years’ experience of advising mid-market UK companies and PE on M&A and IPOs. Karri has a significant focus on ESG and his approach to corporate finance is driven by a principle of always doing the right thing by clients, staff and society. He is involved with a number of charitable initiatives particularly focused on education and inclusivity. Prior to IMAP UK, Karri was a Partner at Cavendish Corporate Finance as well as Head of M&A at Liberum Capital and Panmure Gordon. He is a KPMG qualified Chartered Accountant and has a MA in Politics and BA in Economics from Durham University.

Giles Chesher, partner, Squire Patton Boggs

Giles’ particular expertise covers mergers and acquisitions, IPOs and private equity. He has worked on a number of high-profile private equity and M&A transactions in the local, national and international markets, acting for a wide variety of corporate and institutional clients. Giles also acts as a trusted business adviser to corporate clients on structural, organisational and strategic legal matters, assisting with dynamic growth strategies, defensive cost cutting measures and everything in between.

Emma Leahey, senior group legal counsel, The Ardonagh Group

Emma works in The Ardonagh Group’s M&A legal team based in London, leading on acquisitions and joint ventures across its insurance advisory and broking platforms with particular focus on those in Europe and Oceania. She works alongside Ardonagh’s in-house corporate finance advisors and M&A team to execute strategic transactions which both complement Ardonagh’s existing portfolio and expand its global footprint. As part of this process she regularly deals with a variety of sellers ranging from management through to large private equity houses.

Federico Fruhbeck Jr., partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

Federico Fruhbeck is a partner in the London office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Federico is co-chair of the Projects and Infrastructure Practice Group, co-head of Private Equity in Europe, and a member of the Mergers and Acquisitions and Capital Markets Practice Groups.

Federico’s practice focuses on cross-border M&A transactions across Europe and Latin America for private equity clients and large family-owned conglomerates, with a particular focus in the infrastructure, ESG and real assets sector. He also advises both issuers and underwriters on capital markets transactions, particularly in high-yield issuances (including green bond issuances) and initial public offerings. He has extensive experience across multiple jurisdictions, with a particular focus on Spain, Italy, Germany, France and the Nordic region.

Alice Brogi, partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

Alice Brogi is a partner in the London office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Alice is a member of the Private Equity, Mergers and Acquisitions and Capital Markets practice groups.

Alice practices private equity M&A, representing sponsors in cross-border transactions across a number of sectors with a focus on infrastructure and hard assets. She has advised clients on domestic and cross-border acquisitions, disposals, preferred equity and debt investments, joint ventures, loan-to-own restructurings, and portfolio acquisitions in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria and the Nordics.

Alice has also advised private equity firms on investments across a number of sectors, including telecom, construction, financial services and technology sectors. She has previously completed secondments both at Hudson Advisors UK and also to the merchant banking division of Goldman Sachs.

Richard Smith, senior partner, Slaughter and May

Jenny Luckham, legal director, group commercial, corporate and M&A, Ascential 

Jenny is Legal Director, Commercial, Corporate and M&A at Ascential plc, a FTSE250 events-led business. She and her team are responsible for the smooth operation of the ever changing Ascential group, leading on significant M&A and investment activity and large-scale technology transformations. She has extensive experience in the Media & Technology space, working with multinationals, SME’s and creative individuals both in-house (Global, NBCUniversal, Love Productions) and in private practice at boutique and national firms.