Biography
Sarah is uniquely placed to advise on UK takeovers as she is one of the most recent senior case officers to return to private practice from the UK Takeover Panel. During her two-year secondment to the Panel she was the senior case officer on many of the most notable UK public M&A transactions of that period, including CD&R/Fortress/Morrisons; Towerbrook/Warburg Pincus/The AA; Ceasars Entertainment/William Hill; Aristocrat/Playtech; KKR/John Laing; Raymond James/Charles Stanley; National Express/Stagecoach; Ballys/Gamesys; Renesas/Dialog Semiconductor; Cisco/IMImobile; Electronic Arts/Codemasters; TDR/Aggreko; and Brigadier/Moss Bros. As a member of the senior team, Sarah also participated in all material policy and disciplinary decisions taken by the Panel Executive as well as in multiple consultation processes regarding important revisions to the UK Takeover Code.
In addition to her takeovers expertise, Sarah’s experience spans international private and public M&A, corporate restructurings, joint ventures and equity offerings across a wide variety of sectors, in particular natural resources and healthcare. She has previously spent time on secondment in Dubai and Moscow, as well as at Glencore. Sarah is ranked as a “Next Generation Partner” for ‘Upper mid-market and premium M&A deals’ by Legal 500 2022 and as a “Rising Star of Legal Services” in Europe by Financial News 2023.
Representative experience from her previous firm includes advising:
- Kinetic and Globalvia on their £650m consortium offer for The Go Ahead Group plc
- Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited on its £46bn recommended offer for Shire plc
- G4S plc on the £720m sale of its conventional cash business to The Brink’s Company
- SABMiller plc on its £78bn recommended acquisition by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV
- Home Retail Group plc on its £1.4bn recommended takeover by J Sainsbury plc
- Glencore plc on multiple international M&A transactions in Europe, Africa and Latin America
- Amec Foster Wheeler plc on the sale of its upstream UK oil and gas business to Worley Parsons
- Countryside Properties plc on its initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange
- Towergate Insurance group on its £1bn financial restructuring
- Sanofi on the acquisition of a majority stake in Globalpharma LLC
- Investment Corporation of Dubai and Dubai Aluminium on the merger to create Emirates Global Aluminium