In the three years since joining Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson, Kate Downey has been appointed its first female private equity head in Europe and has overseen the growth of the funds practice from three partners and six associates to six partners and 20 associates, making it one of the largest teams in the capital.
Her focus is far-reaching, meaning the associates under her wing have the opportunity to learn about different asset classes and types of funds.
Though private equity funds are a part of the group’s core DNA, Downey now leads a varied practice, advising fund sponsors and financial institutions across a broad range of asset classes, and on funds across the full range of special situations, venture, growth, clean energy and renewables, infrastructure and real estate.
She also co-chairs the Women in Fund Finance’s European Committee, brandishing the torch for women within the fund industry and raising the issues women face within the financial world on a global platform.
Nazir Dewji, partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, was asked to take on the role of head of UK real estate at an exciting time for his firm. Having just signed off its transatlantic merger with Bryan Cave, BLP propelled the construction lawyer to a top position at the newly merged firm on the back of a torrent of mighty transactions. So far, he has covered transactions totalling between £5bn and £6bn across a range of sectors.
Dewji has lent a hand to a significant proportion of the major developments going on right now which are reviving the landscape of London. These include advising Land Securities on 21 Moorfields, which will become Deutsche Bank’s new HQ, as well as Northacre and UAE’s ADFG on their £400m development of the former New Scotland Yard site on The Broadway, Westminster.
Over the past two years, Dewji has been broadening his reach, such as in his work on 150 Bishopsgate. As well as advising on the construction law aspects of the development, he led the wider multi-disciplinary teams, including real estate, finance and tax. He also runs the real estate client sector focus programme.
It is what every lawyer dreams about after returning to work from maternity leave: the onset of GDPR. This is what awaited Travers Smith’s Louisa Chambers in 2016, some 18 months before the all-important data deadline for the firm’s corporate clientele. She got straight to work and, recognising a sense of panic in the market, developed a new compliance programme to help Travers’ clients prepare for the new measures. The initiative bore new client wins, including investment manager Muzinich & Co and Eco-Bat Technologies, the world’s largest producer of lead. Chambers also added shoe retailer Office to her roster, another client drawn to her ‘no-nonsense’ approach to GDPR and compliance.
The second Travers lawyer to be made partner while on maternity leave, Chambers is a driving force in the firm’s technology, IP and data protection practice. She is one of six partners in the group, which has trebled in size in three years owing to increased activity in the sector.
Her client list, which includes Zoopla, Trainline and Deliveroo, is testament to the group’s importance in attracting some of the UK’s most innovative businesses to its doors.
The sole female partner in Macfarlanes’ corporate group, Jessica Adam is flying the flag for women who want to progress in this male-dominated field. Promoted to partner in 2013, Adam is at the forefront of decision-making for the firm’s junior lawyers, chairing its associate committee with a focus on diversity and career pathways. Having started her legal life at Scottish firm Shepherd & Wedderburn, she has since installed herself as one of Macfarlanes’ brightest corporate stars.
Her highlights of 2018 included advising long-standing client Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner on the sale of its majority stake in Lawyers on Demand. The mandate reflects Adam’s growing presence in the world of professional services firms in need of legal expertise. It is a niche area, but is one that nevertheless sees her acting on some of the most relevant transactions to the legal industry.
A specialist in private M&A, Adam also acted on deals last year for internet provider Hyperoptic, the management team of Element Power and a new fund partnership between Aberdeen Standard Investments and 21 Partners. She has further become the main corporate partner for Virgin Group, a prized client of the silver circle stalwart.
Cabot Credit Management’s general counsel Charley Davies is swapping over to a new role at a UK loans company. Davies, a former partner at RPC, was head of Cabot Credit’s legal team for over four years and will be joining Provident Financial in its top legal role from April. She replaces Ken Mullen, who has […]
Travers Smith has set up a working group focused on boosting the firm’s investments in innovation, following the arrival of its new chief technology officer from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. The group is the brainchild of new chief technology officer Oliver Bethell, who joined the firm four months ago after 14 years at Freshfields. There, he […]
Berwin Leighton Paisner has released its final LLP accounts as a UK-headquartered firm, having merged with US outfit Bryan Cave in April last year. The accounts cover BLP’s finances across 2017/18, showing a fall in net profit of over 22 per cent from £72m to £56m. Since 2015/16 BLP’s net profit has fallen each year, […]
Addleshaw Goddard‘s LLP filings show a return to form for the firm, with its highest paid partner once again taking home a £1m share of the profits. The firm’s most recent accounts reveal an overall rebound after a disappointing set of results in 2016/17, which saw the highest paid partner’s remuneration shrink by 29.5 per cent […]
Ahead of her session at this year’s In-house Financial Services conference, The Lawyer talks to Ruth Pearson, general counsel at LendInvest, about why it’s important for legal functions to be agile and how her team manages to keep apace with change while prioritising innovation.
What is the role of the in-house function in delivering change projects?
Ruth Pearson
In-house legal is uniquely positioned (compared to other business teams) to assist in delivering change projects given its holistic view of the business and natural ability to spot potential issues and provide solutions. At LendInvest, in the last year alone we have launched several new products, completed a Series C funding round, increased our headcount by 25 per cent, our assets under management by 94 per cent, partnered with a number of new financial institutions and strategic partners, adapted for GDPR and Mifid II and so there’s certainly been a lot of projects and an abundance of change to manage – all of which the legal team played a leading or key role in.
As is often spoken about at the moment, the days when in-house legal provided a siloed legal advisory function are gone – we are now business strategists, working closely with the business to identify and reduce barriers to growth and success. Key to that success is an ability to analyse the effect of innovation and change on the business and its people and to ensure it is understood and managed appropriately. In performing this role, it is important for in-house functions to be agile; to respond and adapt to changes in spec, timelines and from both internal and external stakeholders throughout the various projects being effected, and to keep that holistic view in mind. In a fast paced or high growth business, the initial spec (and therefore effect) of a six month project is likely to have changed dramatically by the time the end product is rolled out or project is complete, so it’s important to be dynamic.
How is your in-house function keeping up with the pace of technological change?
As a small team within one of the UK’s fastest growing fintechs, we are agile and our ability to continually take stock, assess and adapt our approach means that managing technological change is part of the day job. We have the luxury of fantastic tech and operations teams – on hand to provide the necessary expertise in analysing new legal tech products and separating the wheat from the (extensive) chaff. I wouldn’t say we keep pace with change, but rather we look to continuously identify inefficiencies and then work with our tech team to see if technology (whether built internally or bought in) can assist with that. Not all solutions to inefficiencies are tech-driven – we use technology where it helps us, not for technology’s sake.
With mounting cost pressures and increased uncertainty, how can businesses prioritise innovation?
At LendInvest we prioritise innovation based on an analysis of which improvements will be most effective in helping us achieve our business objectives. If your key strategic goals are clearly established and communicated well to the business, and the business understands the sequence of steps required to reach those goals, the leadership can ensure all employees are focussed in the right direction and can effectively prioritise both short term and long term change. Uncertainty is taken into account as part of our analysis, for example, the uncertainties around the future of peer to peer regulation were relevant to our decision to withdraw from that market in 2017.
There are so many areas in which automation, AI and new technologies can be utilised with the best intentions, but change can be a huge resource sucker if not fully mapped and implemented effectively or if it isn’t adding sufficient value to the strategic direction of the business.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned thus far?
Not the most important, but a lesson I’m learning at the moment – returning to work after having a baby is every bit the juggling act people warned me it would be!
Ruth Pearson is one of the 30+ speakers making up this year’s speaker line-up at The Lawyer’s In-house Financial Services conference on 9 April. For more information on the conference, a copy of the agenda, or to inquire about attending, please contact Kenan Balli on +44(0) 20 7970 4017.
Weil Gotshal & Manges private equity partner Samantha McGonigle is the latest to leave the firm, with plans to set up a growth fund with a client. McGonigle leaves after nearly 13 years at Weil Gotshal, having worked her way up from associate to partner. Before Weil Gotshal, she was an assistant at legacy Lovells […]
Bird & Bird‘s turnover has risen 12 per cent in the first half of the 2018/19 financial year, shooting from €177m last year to €197m. Profit before tax also grew considerably by 15 per cent from to €52m to €59m during the period. The results were released alongside the firm’s LLPs, which showed changes in the firm’s board, led […]
The administrators for King & Wood Mallesons’ UK arm have applied for a further two years to deal with the firm’s insolvency. Quantuma now has until January 2021 to handle the administration, at which point the firm will have been in administration for four years. The large number of creditors involved in the collapse is […]
Latest accounts reveal that Dentons acquired assets worth £11.5m from Scottish firm Maclay Murray & Spens in the first full-year results to be published by the LLP since the merger went live in 2017. The UK and Middle East accounts show that Maclays had a revenue of £15.8m prior to the merger, with a net profit of […]
Taylor Wessing has secured victory for Grant Thornton in an appeal by Manchester Building Society, over whether the auditor is liable to pay it losses totaling £32.7m. In a Court of Appeal judgment handed down today, Lord Justices Hamblen and Males, alongside Lady Justice Gloster, dismissed calls from Manchester Building Society to penalise financially its […]
Sky has named its new group general counsel, with legal chief James Conyers bowing down from the role after 25 years in the company. Vicky Sandry, who featured in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 2018 will replace Conyers in the coming months and will be responsible for all legal and regulatory affairs across the group, which includes all […]
King & Spalding has re-established its Paris real estate practice with the hire of a three-lawyer team from Ashurst led by partner Guillaume Aubatier. Aubatier has joined King & Spalding with counsel Dorian Scemama and associate Malvina Dahan in its corporate, finance and investments practice in Paris. He was promoted to partner at Ashurst in […]
Over 10 years ago, ex-Hogan Lovells lawyer David Marriott went on secondment at developer Argent. He's still there, working on one of its largest projects.
Outer Temple Chambers has named Lloyds Banking Group’s people director Rebecca Priestley as the set’s new CEO, making it her first legal role since leaving Simmons & Simmons in 2006.
The former Simmons senior associate is a dual-qualified solicitor/barrister having started her career at the Bar before moving to private practice and then to financial services.
At Simmons, she specialised in contentious and non-contentious employment issues, leading her to join Standard Chartered Bank in 2006 to establish its in-house HR legal risk function. Five years later she joined Lloyds Bank in the same role, moving through a series of role until becoming its people director in 2017.
Priestley took up her role on 7 January as the set’s first designated CEO and will work with the set’s three joint-heads of chambers; Michael Bowes QC, Andrew Spink QC and Christopher Gibson QC.
The trio issued a joint-statement on Priestley which said: “The creation of the CEO role and Rebecca’s appointment reflect chambers’ ambition for strategic growth, including internationally, and our ongoing commitment to modernise and enhance the quality of our client services and care.”
Data gathered for The Lawyer Bar Top 30 showed Outer Temple to be the joint 13th largest set by headcount, alongside Brick Court Chambers, boasting 87 tenants, including 23 silks.
Priestly said: “It’s an exciting time to be joining Outer Temple Chambers, which has a wealth of exceptionally talented, approachable and client-focused people working in an inclusive, collaborative culture. I’m looking forward to working with Chambers to build its business and profile and enhance Outer Temple Chambers’ reputation as a sophisticated, modern and progressive set.”
Addleshaw Goddard is fighting to bring a professional negligence claim from one of its former clients to the Scottish courts, in a move that could allow the case to be struck out after five years rather than six.
AH&S claims that HBJ Gateley (which sat on Barclays’ legal panel at the time) was “unduly influenced by, and failed to act independently of Barclays’ interest”, while also alleging that the firm failed “to act in the best interests of AH&S” and also “failed to act with reasonable care and skill of a reasonably competent solicitor”.
In a recent jurisdictional hearing, Addleshaws’ Scottish arm – AG (Scotland) LLP – put forward an argument to transfer the case to the Scottish courts. No judgment has been reached on the jurisdiction application, with another hearing set for 7 February.
If granted, the decision could significantly impact on the claim’s strike-out limitation, which would drop from the English and Welsh courts’ six years to the Scottish judicial system’s five.
That could potentially allow the firm to run down the clock on the claim 12 months faster than it would be able to do so if it were being heard in England.
The firm is thought to have argued that Edinburgh-based Addleshaws partner Tim Cooper operates with a dual Scottish/English practising licence and was operating out of a Scottish firm at the time of the insolvency.
Knights partner Mark Dennis is representing AH&S in the case, instructing Enterprise Chambers’ Stephen Davies QC.
Court filings from Dennis alleged that Addleshaws’ Scottish LLP allowed itself to fall under the “informal control” of Barclays while it was still HBJ Gateley prior to its 2017 merger.
DWF equity partners are facing a capital lock-in period of five years should the firm float on the London Stock Exchange, the firm’s registration document has revealed. The clause states that partners would be “subject to a phased lock up” which expires upon the announcement of the group’s financial results in April 2024. When asked […]
In the three years since joining Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson, Kate Downey has been appointed its first female private equity head in Europe and has overseen the growth of the funds practice from three partners and six associates to six partners and 20 associates, making it one of the largest teams in the capital.
Nazir Dewji, partner at 
It is what every lawyer dreams about after returning to work from maternity leave: the onset of GDPR. This is what awaited 
The sole female partner in 