Lovells has underlined its commitment to developing its corporate practice with the hire of Chris Ashworth to head the firm's corporate finance practice.
Chris, formerly head of European M&A and co-managing partner of O’Melveny & Myers’ London office and previously head of corporate at Ashurst, will join Lovells on 8 May.
Commenting on Chris's hire Lovells' managing partner David Harris said:
"The health of any international law firm is judged by the strength of its corporate practice and we are committed to long term strategic investment in this area. Bringing in a high profile individual with the market reputation that Chris has reflects our ambition and our continued investment in the practice."
As head of the corporate finance practice, Chris will be a partner in the international corporate practice stream, which is led by Andrew Skipper. The corporate team is structured around four industry sectors - financial institutions (headed by John Young); consumer commercial retail & real estate (headed by Peter Watts); life sciences & industrials (headed by Richard Ufland); energy, power, utilities & infrastructure (headed by John Cooper) - with the corporate finance, private equity, equity capital markets, commercial & regulatory, tax and competition practices underpinning those sectors.
Andrew Skipper, Practice Stream Leader, corporate added:
"Chris's track record speaks for itself and we are delighted he has decided to join us. The practice has had a strong start to the year, being ranked third in the Q1 Mergermarket tables for the UK and with two of our partners amongst the top advisers for the quarter. Building on that strong pipeline of work and continued investment in the practice we are very optimistic for the future."
Chris Ashworth said:
"I relish the opportunity to work at a firm which is ambitious for success and where I can really make a difference to the development of the practice. I was also impressed by the quality of the partners I met and the strong international platform the firm has from which I can leverage my experience."
Chris Ashworth is a corporate lawyer focussing on mergers and acquisitions, private equity, equity capital markets, corporate finance, reconstruction and insolvency. He was formerly Head of the Corporate Department at Ashurst, London, as well as previously being Head of M&A, Investment Banking and Telecoms, and for many years a Member of the Board.
Notable transactions on which he has advised include:
- the attempted bid for Marks & Spencer by Philip Green;
- the bid by Deutsche Borse AG for The London Stock Exchange;
- the restructuring of Railtrack Group plc
In the last two years he has advised:
- GIC SI on its £10.3 billion bid for BAA pls
- GIC SI on its £2.87 billion bid for AB Ports plc
- GIC SI, as part of a consortium, on a £3 billion approach for utilities group Kelda, the owner of Yorkshire Water
- Discovery on its launch of PruProtect, a company set up in a joint venture with Prudential to write UK life assurance business, where Lovells' John Young and Rachel Kent were advising Prudential.
- on the restructuring of Palmer & Harvey Holdings
- on three AIM IPOs