Travers Smith LLP is delighted to announce that Private Equity and Financial Sponsors Partner Genna Marten, and Dispute Resolution Partner, Toby Robinson, have been included in The Lawyer magazine's 2023, Hot 100. The Hot 100 is an annual publication which celebrates extraordinary lawyers based in the UK who have completed ground-breaking work in the last year.
Genna Marten
Travers Smith is known for training up some of the brightest minds in UK private equity. Genna Marten is no exception. Although not a complete Travers lifer (she trained at Scottish firm Burness Paull), Marten careered through the ranks and made partner within eight years of qualifying. After time off from maternity leave, Marten returned to the fold at the start of a busy 2021. There’s been little let up in dealmaking ever since.
Looking back on it as a pivotal deal in her career, Marten led for Epiris on the acquisition of Sepura, a supplier of digital radio devices used by the police and other emergency services. Given the transaction’s security implications, this was the UK’s first deal to be cleared with conditions under the National Security and Investment Act 2021. Marten played a critical role in negotiations with the Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in a one of kind acquisition deal. Alongside this, she added Quilvest as a client to Travers’ private equity team and advised Access Group on a £9.2bn investment deal with its existing shareholders, TA Associates and Hg, and new minority shareholder GIC. A follow-on deal for Access saw Marten take the lead once more as it agreed the purchase of Pay360. This Travers dealmaker is on a roll.
Acting in what has been dubbed the “tech trial of the century”, Toby Robinson of Travers Smith led the team to success for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HP) in a dispute that arose from HP’s $11bn acquisition of Autonomy Corporation in 2011.
The explosive 10-month trial concluded in January 2020 and involved allegations of a $5bn fraud against Autonomy’s former chief operating officer Mike Lynch and chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain. In May 2022, more than two years after the trial ended, Mr Justice Hildyard handed down a 1,659-page judgment in which he penned that the trial “may rank as one of the longest and most complex in English legal history.”
For nearly 10 of Robinson’s 15 years at Travers Smith, he has supported HP in the highly complex fraud litigation and weathered a ludicrously high-profile trial. Watch out for this case in 2023, as damages are yet to be awarded, and with a possibility of appeal, Robinson’s work on this trial hasn’t finished yet.
View the full list here
