Law firm reveals £516m deals tally
Shakespeare Martineau’s corporate and banking teams supported more than £516m worth of deals in the East Midlands last year, the law firm has revealed.
Nationally, the company completed an average of seven deals a week, including more than £400m worth across the technology and healthcare sectors alone. The average deal size was a cool £10m.
Overall, the business supported nearly £3.4bn worth of transactions across the UK.
Duncan James, head of corporate at Shakespeare Martineau, said: “The calendar year of 2022 was, on the whole, really strong for our corporate team. Despite various headwinds – increase in interest rates, the value of assets being tested more and concern around some forecasts – M&A activity did not tail off in the second half of the year as we had thought, and the pipeline has continued to be strong into the start of 2023.”
The firm’s head of banking Naomi Tudor said: “2022 saw our banking team act on some large refinance transactions, a number of acquisitions in the healthcare and charity space, and the volume of property financing transactions remained strong.
“While a number of the factors causing market volatility in 2022 look set to continue into 2023, early signs show there are some sectors bucking the trend, including technology, media and communications, renewables, FinTech, Biotech, oil and gas.
“Some of that volatility may well create debt finance opportunities as corporates look to refinance expensive debt facilities and regulatory changes in certain sectors – so watch this space for a year of different deals.”
Mohammed Saqub, head of Islamic finance – in which Shakespeare Martineau specialises – said: “The real estate finance team continues to grow despite the economic downturn thanks largely to its client base of UK and overseas financial institutions – including Islamic finance institutions.
“Recent property finance transactions with an overseas listed REAT demonstrate on one hand the truly international nature of the practise and at the same time, servicing high street bank SME customers in the UK reaffirms the team’s commitment to a key driver of the UK economy.”
