Voting Closed

To find out who won, book a table at the British Private Equity Party Awards 2025 on Tuesday, 30 September at The Brewrey, London

Addleshaw Goddard

We stand out for our strong momentum and growth in the UK and Europe.

Following openings in Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg, Germany and France, we added Warsaw, enhancing our service for UK and international investors. We saw strong appetite for UK investors seeking opportunities in Europe and worked on deals across all offices, notably Ireland, helping clients such as LDC, Inflexion and Phoenix invest there since our 2022 Dublin launch.

We lead in supporting independent sponsors and emerging funds, including via our European independent sponsor forum – which brings together 150+ capital providers and deal by deal investors across Europe. This is an under-served market in Europe (unlike the US) where we now lead the conversation.

We remain Tier 1 for mid-market PE in Legal 500. While focussed on mid-market sponsor work, many large cap investors trust us to support portcos on strategic M&A, value creation and exit preparation. To strengthen this, we added partners Sharon Skipper-Gordon from K&E and Robbie Hay from Milbank.

We are active in all our markets, growing teams and specialisms – such as finance, tax, regulatory, national security, and anti-trust. We offer sector expertise across our geographies and run programmes for clients and intermediaries focussed on healthcare (& medtech), professional services (with a strong track record in accountancy, law/IP advisory etc) and Financial Services (& fiduciary/trust, wealth management and insurance).

Our PE team has been very busy this year. Given our size and scope we outpace most competitors, as data shows. Our market share of buyouts and exits has grown, with heavy activity in acquisitions for platform assets.

CMS

Notwithstanding a continuingly volatile macro-economic climate, the CMS PE team has been able to develop further following on an extremely successful 2024, in which the CMS PE team advised longstanding client August Equity on its sale of Agilio Software to Five Arrows and TA Associates, which was awarded ‘Small Buyout Exit of the Year’ at the 2024 British Private Equity Awards. CMS were also a shortlisted 'Law Firm of the Year - Transactions' at the 2024 British Private Equity Awards.

The team has advised on over 60 deals with an aggregate value in excess of £7,000,000,000, with our expertise in leveraged buyouts, exits, management advisory and all other PE legal advisory services proving invaluable to clients.

The team continues to work extensively with the likes of Horizon Capital, August Equity, Providence Equity Partners, Limerston Capital, L&G Capital, CBPE, Three Hills Capital, Queen’s Park Equity, TDR Capital and Bay Tree Private Equity and, whilst expanding its practice into the upper mid-market, having notably advised United Trust Bank and its shareholders on the acquisition of a minority interest in the bank by global private equity firm, Warburg Pincus.

Latham & Watkins

Latham & Watkins’ UK private equity practice has had an exceptional year, continuing to advise on the most complex, high-profile, cross-border private equity transactions, including some of the largest and most intricate public-to-private deals in the UK market. Our practice is recognized as one of the most active, diverse, and highly regarded private equity M&A practices in both the UK and Europe. It is fully integrated with our market-leading private equity funds, finance, structured finance, growth, capital markets, restructuring, and dedicated private equity-focused specialist practice areas and industry groups.

In the first half of 2025, we ranked #1 for UK M&A deals by both value and deal count, according to Mergermarket data. Our unparalleled scale in London, Europe, and globally allows us to offer a uniquely comprehensive service in the market. No continental UK or European firm matches our global platform, and no US firm offers our size and strength in both continental Europe and the UK.

This scale provides us with a unique vantage point, keeping us at the forefront of the latest trends, such as take-privates and the rise of continuation vehicles/GP-led secondaries.

Macfarlanes

In what has been a challenging PE transactional market, Macfarlanes’ unique skillset and specialist expertise coupled with our long-standing relationships and broader private equity capabilities has allowed the practice to remain exceptionally busy, working on a stream of complex, high-profile mandates.

This is particularly evidenced in professional services, a growing area of investment for private capital, where we worked on market-leading transactions including advising:

• Exponent on its successful exit from Isio, having previously advised on the ground-breaking carve-out from KPMG – the first spin out from the Big 4; and
• Evelyn Partners (backed by Permira and Warburg Pincus) on the sale of its advisory arm to funds advised by Apax, building on our lead role in the £1.8bn Tilney/Smith & Williamson merger.

Our unique combination of private capital and UHNW advisory capability positions us perfectly for founder-led businesses looking to a PE exit, which directly led to us securing the role to advise Preqin on its £2.55bn sale to BlackRock, one of the most prominent transactions of the year.

Many more deals were successfully executed for long-standing clients including Epiris, Alchemy, Mayfair Equity Partners, another very successful Exponent partial exit and others across a variety of sectors.

Our sector insight helped us win these mandates and remains a key differentiator. To enhance this strength further, we launched our sector intelligence platform this year, providing data-driven insights to facilitate successful deployment in high-growth areas, deepening our value to sponsors.

Squire Patton Boggs

In a fifth consecutive year of growth, Squire Patton Boggs is consolidating its position as a leading firm for specialist, full-service legal advice for the private equity industry. We have seen growth across numerous metrics, including an increase in complex, cross-border transactions and correlated deal size (20% increase in total value of deals this year); and client growth – new clients include Phoenix, Eurazeo, Baird, Copilot, Capital D.

We work with over 50 PE Houses headquartered in UK, most with global platforms that we service from multiple offices worldwide. From July 2024 - June 2025, we completed 120 transactions with a total value of circa £11 billion, a significant increase on the previous year.

Our success is driven by an entrepreneurial, dynamic and collaborative team

(Paul Mann, Ben Squires, Charles Leeming consistently among UK’s top 10 dealmakers), by successful, high-level recruitment, and by enhanced full-service capabilities (including specialist co-counsel offering, extensive regulatory, FDI, tax and other legal services).

This year, we expanded our private capital expertise, hiring leading UK and US partners, including former head of Financial Institutions Law at EY UK Monica Gogna and her team, who added extensive funds and financial regulatory experience. These hires, part of our strategy to build out our suite of services across the private equity cycle, give us one of the most complete service offerings to clients in the private equity industry.

Taylor Wessing

2024/2025 has been another landmark year for the Taylor Wessing Private Equity team, marked by our unwavering support to longstanding clients and their portfolio companies through strategic investments that have been some of the most complex and interesting mid-market deals of the year. This year has seen deals with unique challenges and features.

Our ability to navigate these with creativity and precision has seen our clients come to us for their most complex and interesting deals.

In addition to the case study we have provided detailing our involvement advising on the sale of Medik8 to L'Oréal, we have identified 3 further transactions during this period which reinforce the quality of our work and exceptional service we offer to clients:

Sullivan Street Partners acquisition of UK Addiction Treatment Group (UKAT): 

We advised Sullivan Street Partners, on its acquisition of UK Addiction Treatment Group (UKAT), the UK’s leading, residential addiction treatment group. UKAT operates over 200 beds across eight residential facilities in the UK. It specialises in comprehensive care and rehabilitation services for alcoholism, substance abuse, and wider behavioural and mental health conditions. The deal was particularly complex as the prior ownership structure was linked to Greg Lindberg, who recently pled guilty in connection with a US$2bn fraud in the US. UKAT's parent company was placed into administration in 2023. In this context, the transaction was highly complex as the Taylor Wessing team advised Sullivan Street on protecting the wider group's position from US litigation; equity and debt funding for the deal; documenting a new management incentivisation plan; and the acquisition of the business out of administration including customary due diligence. In July 2025 we supported UKAT with an add-one acquisition of rehabilitation centre The Providence Projects.

Inflexion investment in Nodor Group: 

We advised Inflexion Private Equity on its high-profile investment in Nodor Group (Nodor), a collection of the largest premium darts equipment brands in the world. The investment was made by Inflexion’s Buyout Fund VI. Having spent over 100 years at the forefront of the darts industry, Nodor is recognised as the most advanced manufacturer of premium dartboards, darts and related products globally. 

The TW Private Equity team also co-ordinated input from their specialist teams, notably their tax, intellectual property and employment teams.

Eurochange sale to The Western Union Company: 

We advised Eurochange, the leading high street retailer of travel money, and Corsair, its majority shareholder, on the sale of the business to a subsidiary of The Western Union Company. Having advised NoteMachine and Eurochange through the full lifecycle of their transaction journey, this emphasises the trust that clients place in our team. We initially advised Rutland Partner and the management team back in 2012 on the sale of NoteMachine to funds managed by Corsair Capital. This was followed in 2014 when we advised NoteMachine on the acquisition of Eurochange and subsequently in 2022 on the sale of NoteMachine and Corsair Capital to a subsidiary of The Brink's Company.

Taylor Wessing's achievements stem from exceptional teamwork, innovative strategies, and substantial client success stories—solidifying our standing as deserving candidates for recognition at the British Private Equity Awards.

Voting Closed

To find out who won, book a table at the British Private Equity Party Awards 2025 on Tuesday, 30 September at The Brewrey, London