Julian Lewis

Currently I am an active partner in our corporate and mergers & acquisitions practice, as well acting as the firm's Finance Partner, and between September 2019 and March 2021 I held the role of acting Chief Operating Officer. My practice now focuses on the hospitality sector, in particular advising on hotel acquisitions, disposals, funding, joint ventures & structured real estate transactions as well as general mergers & acquisitions particularly for management owned and controlled businesses. My experience and expertise comes to the fore when I am advising the entrepreneurs and decision makers behind any deal.

I have acted on the sale of numerous family owned and management controlled businesses. I have considerable experience of structuring and negotiating joint ventures especially in the property development space. Whilst working at Betterware I structured and negotiated a joint venture with Avon Products the well-known global direct selling business. We established ventures in Central and South America and Eastern Europe to sell housewares using the Betterware territorial based direct selling system. I acted for Tomkins selling off most of their industrial businesses in the UK. More recently, I was instrumental in finalising negotiations between a family office client and the GLA for a major residential-led riverside development in London.

In addition to practising law in private practice, I have also spent four years running a high net worth private office, whilst acting as Group Legal Counsel to the family controlled listed business Betterware PLC. Subsequently, I was one of three directors who then took Betterware private in a £126m deal with funding from Bridgepoint and CSFB. This unique combination of experience allows me to fully understand the client perspective (having been one for 8 years!) and I bring my unusually diverse experience to the table to close transactions calmly and efficiently.