Linklaters LLP

Leveraging expertise ‘across all product areas’ throughout the capital structure and also able to tap into lawyers in key financial global centres throughout the firm’s network of offices, Linklaters LLP is a ’very safe pair of hands’ for clients providing and receiving financing to facilitate M&A transactions across the world. On the lender front, the firm’s longstanding roster of high-profile banking clients, as well as its popularity with sponsors as “designated counsel”, ensures that it has been picking up work as markets have thawed, despite remaining macro challenges. Nick Syson is particularly popular as designated counsel. The ‘very proactive’ Toby Grimstone has excellent insight into creditor and debtor perspectives by dint of a fairly balanced lender and corporate client roster, and regularly advises on big ticket corporate-led M&A financings, including his work for one of the largest takeovers by a UK company in 2023. Leveraged finance head Oliver Sceales is the driving force behind the firm’s private equity finance offering, regularly advising sponsors on bank and credit fund-led financing deals to facilitate cross-border M&A, including take-private mandates. Other key practitioners include Pathik Gandhi, who is adept at advising banks and credit funds lending into sponsor-backed M&A deals. Former leveraged finance co-head David Irvine joined Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Daniel Peach joined Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.