Key clients: Friends Life, Julius Baer, Novartis, Lloyds Banking Group
Partner since 2008
Why corporate? The sheer variety. The access to senior decision-makers in clients was fantastic.
Early on I had a lot of responsibility. I found if you were willing to step up to take on more than your expected workload there were lots of opportunities to take bigger roles.
I went on secondment early in my career to Japan. We only had a very small corporate team there. I got to work on a number of transactions for Vodafone. In London it would have been a huge team – there was me as a two or three-year-qualified associate in the thick of it.
Jeremy Parr got me involved on the acquisition of HBOS acting for Lloyds when I got made partner in 2008. It was right at the heart of the financial crisis. Like Armageddon and all through that we worked together on Lloyds. He became a great friend and mentor. Watching him taught me what it meant to be a partner at Linklaters.
‘There is a small group of friends at the same level of partnership who are aligned.’
Matt Bland, Linklaters
It felt like we were in a war during the crisis. We did HBOS and the recapitalisation in 2009 and the rights issue at the end of 2009. I was working harder than I ever had before and dealing with one crisis after another, but it was a very formative experience. Unhappy circumstances but I was very lucky to have the opportunity.
I have a broad base of clients in banking and insurance, the work we are doing at the moment on ring-fencing is cutting edge. We have some really interesting roles in the insurance space – for me it was Friends Life, now part of Aviva. The team has some great relationships.
There is a small group of friends at the same level of partnership who are aligned and revved up, and who in the past two or three years have started getting together and getting excited about working as a team and not just doing our own thing.
Future standouts? Dan Schuster-Woldan, Simon Branigan and Tracey Lochhead. James Wootton – he made partner in 2015, he’s got a broad practice but a focus on equities. There’s succession planning there, as John Lane has been the go-to for us on equities and now James is making great inroads.
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