35 LAW FIRM
OF THE YEAR AWARD
SPONSORED BY GRANT THORNTON WINNER Osborne Clarke
Above: Greg Leyshon of Osborne Clarke
Left: The winning Osborne Clarke team with Duncan Lamb (fifth from left) of sponsor Grant Thornton
As the Deals Awards evening reached its halfway mark, a buzzing audience was called to relatively silent attention as presenter Martin Stanford alerted them to another hotly contested and highly prized award among Thames Valley legal professionals.
There were four shortlisted nominations for this award: Osborne Clarke, Pitmans, Shoosmiths and Stevens & Bolton.
Once again the judges wanted to recognise the impressive efforts of more than one firm within the excellence of the shortlisted quartet. They did so by acknowledging Pitmans as Outstanding Performer in 2013.
In 2013 Pitmans completed 44 deals with a total value of £205 million. Highlights included the MBOs of GTK and Abacus, disposal of Eclipse, and acquisitions for Ridgeway. Nominations from clients praised the “highly-regarded” firm for the quality and speed of its deal work.
Following another excellent year of business Shoosmiths came to this category with high hopes, especially with their Lawyer of the Year Rebecca Mauleverer already acclaimed earlier in the evening and her colleague Emma Gibson once again shortlisted. One corporate finance adviser highlighted the firm as having a “fantastic relationship” with the Thames Valley market. Deals included Virgin Wines, TNT
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2014
Post, Equiom, GMG Property, Cennox, and Minerva Education.
Osborne Clarke had a superb 2013 – with 83 deals closed in the Deals Awards qualifying period, a standout year boasting top headline deals like Millgate and Leasedrive, and a total deal value from the Reading office of £1.5 billion.
The Guildford firm of Stevens & Bolton advised management on the £50m Romans MBO backed by Bowmark Capital and the UK management team of Esdevium in a complex €143m Newco cross-border deal. Other headline deals included advising a major minority shareholding group on a restructuring at Westbury Street Holdings and acting on the sale of OTM Consulting.
Anticipation grew in the room as Duncan Lamb, partner at award sponsor Grant Thornton, came to the stage to announce the winner of the keenly contested Law Firm of the Year title – Osborne Clarke.
With 83 deals in 2013 under its belt Osborne Clarke was amply nominated for this category. One satisfied client said Osborne Clarke had “provided high-quality legal due diligence and advisory services under pressurised accelerated timetable conditions…vital in ensuring that the transaction completed successfully and on time”.
Greg Leyshon, partner in Osborne Clarke’s
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corporate finance legal team, later commented on the win: “It is very pleasing because collectively as a market we have had a very difficult past 5-6 years. It is great to see the market back and we have really reaped the rewards of the efforts of the good businesses in the community. As an adviser you are doing your job, it’s the businesses that make you look good. They have been active and we have been lucky to advise them and OC has had a great run over the last 12 months or so.
“I think, through the recession, a lot of law firms, and otherwise, shed a lot of talent in order to cut costs, but we tried to retain that talent and having stuck with our people and continued to invest in them it has held us in good stead with the market coming back. I think that has made a real difference. We have tried to back our people and our people have paid us back, which is nice.”
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