Travers Smith LLP has today announced the promotion of five lawyers to its partnership, with effect from 1 July 2020. The new partners and their principal areas of practice are:
Tom Coulter – Corporate M&A and ECM
Tom is a corporate lawyer with a broad corporate practice based on a mixture of UK and international public and private mergers, acquisitions and disposals, IPOs, equity fundraisings and general corporate advice. He regularly provides advice to a full spectrum of clients, including UK and overseas public and private companies, institutional investors and several financial intermediaries. Recent experience includes advising Micro Focus International plc on its $2.5 billion disposal of its SUSE Linux business and related $1.8bn return of value, S4 Capital plc on its acquisition of Circus Marketing, and TruFin plc on its demerger and IPO of Distribution Finance Capital Holdings plc.
Alex Fisher – Employment
Alex is an employment lawyer advising clients on issues in all areas of contentious and non-contentious employment law. Alex acts for a variety of clients across a wide range of sectors and his experience includes advising on the employment law aspects of corporate disposals and acquisitions, advising on TUPE processes, restructuring exercises and senior executive issues as well as advising on employee disputes, investigations, whistleblowing and employee litigation. Alex's recent work includes advising a listed client on senior executive exit arrangements, carrying out multiple investigations including in respect of allegations of harassment, discrimination and whistleblowing, advising clients in the financial services sector on the senior managers and certification regime and advising clients on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and other employee related-issues caused by Covid-19. Alex also provides regular seminars, training and update sessions for his clients.
Katie McMenamin – Finance
Katie is an experienced finance lawyer with particular expertise acting for lenders and borrowers alike in the fund finance and leverage finance markets. Katie advises on the full range of fund level subscription, NAV/hybrid, secondaries, GP/co-invest and management fee facilities together with preferred equity investments and regularly acts on some of the most highly structured and complex transactions across the spectrum of fund finance products now available to asset managers. Katie's list of fund finance lender clients covers a large number of the most active players alongside borrower mandates for various private equity, secondaries, infrastructure and credit funds. In terms of asset-level financing, Katie acts primarily for lenders (including banks and credit funds) on leverage finance transactions and has extensive experience advising on all aspects of the financing of large private equity-led acquisitions, refinancings, restructurings and dividend recaps.
Polly Richard – Dispute Resolution
Polly has a broad range of commercial litigation experience; most recently acting for Hewlett Packard in the largest fraud claim ever levelled at individuals in the English Court. The fraud claims totalling US$5 billion arose out of Hewlett Packard's US$11 billion acquisition of Autonomy Corporation plc in late 2011. Polly saw the case from start to finish, culminating in a nine-month trial referred to as the "tech trial of the century." The case involved a range of complex legal and accounting issues. Polly has experience in disputes arising out of corporate transactions, multi-jurisdictional insolvency litigation and has acted for a number of individuals subject to investigation by regulators across numerous jurisdictions, including the Financial Conduct Authority, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice.
Joseph Wren – Derivatives & Structured Products
Joseph is a finance lawyer whose focus is derivatives and structured products. He advises funds, asset managers, lenders, corporates and pension schemes. His work encompasses derivatives, repo, and securities lending, the impact of regulation, and investment management, custody, clearing and collateral management. Joseph is recognised in particular for advising asset managers including Allianz Global Investors, Bridgepoint, BC Partners, Generation Investment Management, ICG and Montagu. Joseph's advice to pension schemes and employers covers investment matters, risk transfer and covenant, guarantees, escrow, asset-backed contribution structures, buy-ins and buyouts and longevity insurance transactions. He has worked on some of the UK's largest buyouts (including Nortel and ZF UK (formerly TRW)) and for insurer Rothesay Life (most recently on the ASDA buyout). He works for the pension schemes of Associated British Foods, AXA, BAE Systems, Tata Steel, C. & J. Clark, Unilever, Vodafone, Willis Towers Watson and ZF UK.
Travers Smith's Managing Partner, David Patient, commented: "Congratulations to each of our new partners, who I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with for many years. They are all exceptionally talented lawyers and, whilst we can't celebrate their promotions in quite the same style or way we would normally just at the moment, we hopefully will be able to soon, and I know they will all be significant contributors to the firm's future success."
Travers Smith's Senior Partner, Kathleen Russ, commented: "I am delighted to welcome these five talented lawyers to our partnership. I am very pleased to be able to recognise the contribution they have all made to their specialist fields and I am confident that they will continue to develop as they progress in their careers at Travers Smith."
