Fladgate’s DNA lies at the heart of the world of private capital. We have worked with hundreds of Family Offices, Funds, Private Banks, Alternative Lenders and Privately funded businesses at all stages of their respective lifecycles. Our sector strengths reflect this focus with deep experience in the sectors of special interest to Private Capital including real estate, technology and financial services. We also have a very strong and fast expanding Private Client team who understand the needs of UHNWIs, families and their advisors.
Our clients in this world generally don’t have large in-house resources and so rely on us heavily to guide them through their fast moving and complex challenges. We have shaped our highly differentiated approach for this market around three key deliverables:
*A survey of over 300 of our clients showed that Fladgate scores up to 20% higher than other firms that they use when it comes to delivering a personal, agile, clever and enterprising service.
Partners at Fladgate operate in integrated and highly collaborative teams shaped around each client’s needs and flexing as required. Essential for moving at pace.
Fladgate has developed a service promise that has been developed using feedback from a wide number of our clients and supported via training across the firm. The focus is on delivering a highly personal, very agile and enterprising attitude.
The firm has built strength and depth of expertise and experience across Funds, Finance, Venture Capital, Corporate M&A through to Private Client, Litigation, Regulatory and Real Estate – brought together in project teams aligned around clients’ projects to deliver seamless solutions.
The result is an ability to deliver dynamic and expert advice to clients at the key moments in their particular lifecycles. For examples of work across the world of private capital click on the area relevant to your business
We offer a full range of legal services from a fund’s inception right through to its dissolution or disposal, including potential restructuring and consideration of exit strategies (such as AIM/full market listing, buyout, and portfolio sale). Our advice covers structuring, taxation, regulation, financing, marketing an equity raising, establishment, operation and winding-up as well as reorganisation, investor participation and secondary transactions.
We work for many of the leading and fast-moving trend initiator businesses that are often founder or management team owned and privately funded. We support them with legal services at all stages of their development from Employment, Tax, Disputes, Competition, Contracts, Data protection, Digital business and ecommerce, IP, Outsourcing, through to M&A, trade sales and going public.
Our team has extensive international experience, working with clients including both domestic and foreign banks, investment firms and other companies. We understand the regulatory environment in which our clients operate and the diverse range of financing structures now available. We also act for new entrants to the financial services market, helping them establish new businesses and ensuring regulatory compliance. The team has extensive experience around regulatory investigations and similar challenges.
We specialise in advising on all aspects of wealth structuring and wealth transfer. We support high net worth individuals and families, both in the UK and internationally, including when they are looking to create family offices. We work with family offices to create investment structures through which a family’s investments can be managed – for example a family investment company, an OEIC or a fund – including agreeing the role of the family office in the management, supervision and reporting arrangements around this vehicle.
In 2014 our team began working with a London-headquartered European Private Equity Fund, the relationship started tentatively but has been growing from strength to strength. The fund recognised the value of introductions made to them to potential equity investors (both institutional as well as private) and our connected and enterprising team worked closely with the client setting up a series of meetings with such investors to try to facilitate the raising of further funds as well as to explore co-investment opportunities. We have since provided extensive support on the acquisition and assembly of a UK regional office portfolio and on an ongoing basis we advised on the intensive asset management, refinancing, division, break-up and sale of the individual assets. Our deep understanding of the sector as well as how the client operates allow us to adapt our team in a quick and nimble way, advising on numerous high end real estate, tax, corporate, finance, litigation and construction matters over the years. The fund has completed (2020) an incredible exit with IRR @ 22%.
"The Fladgate team we work with are all experts in their fields, highly capable individuals. They manage to combine a strong academic knowledge of the law with a commercial approach to deal-making - a rare trait for a law firm. They understand our business and know how private equity works. Gideon Dabby-Joory, our client partner, is a pleasure to deal with. Not only is he fiercely intelligent but, perhaps as importantly, he is very responsive and commercial and does not try to over-complicate matters." 2019 L500
We’ve been a part of the BeyondPlay journey since the company’s incorporation in 2020, working closely with their founder Karolina and her team on two funding rounds, corporate structuring and a variety of other commercial agreements; so, it was natural that we would help guide BeyondPlay into their next chapter.
When the acquisition opportunity arose, things happened fast. Balancing numerous stakeholder interests and complex regulatory matters in a short timeframe required careful coordination and highly tailored solutions. Luckily that’s what our Growth Capital team do best, and our longstanding position as an extension of the BeyondPlay team helped keep things running smoothly throughout the process and through to completion.
“Flagdate’s Growth Capital team specialise in taking companies on their corporate journeys from inception to exit. Our experience with BeyondPlay exemplifies this, with the sale of the company to FanDuel the culmination of a three-and-a-half year journey during which we have been involved with all aspects of the business. We are particularly pleased for Karolina Pelc, Jacqui Gatt and all our friends at BeyondPlay that their incredible dedication and perseverance has led to this great result, privileged to have played our part in realising it, and excited to see what the future holds for them under their new umbrella.” - Jamie Hamilton and Alex Haffner.
London Wall is a prestigious multi-family office business that also owns London Wall Lending who operate at the top end of the real estate industry. They provide their clients, some of the world’s most powerful and influential people, with expert and proactive solutions. As one of their panel legal advisors, we know they expect the same from us. Our particular mix of personal service along with agile, clever and enterprising solutions is regularly required in our role. Like the moment when we were acting on a bridging financing of a large serviced aparthotel asset set to complete within a few days. We were supporting London Wall address final credit sign off queries prompted by our concluding legal report.
As the deal marked entry into a new asset class and there were bespoke issues to consider to do with the structuring of the investment and lease terms, these queries were critical. To ensure the loan execution moved fast in the final hours, the lead Partner made herself immediately available within the hour to attend London Wall’s credit review meeting at their offices to discuss the intricacies in person. This enabled London Wall to drive loan execution forward quickly in full confidence of appropriate lender risk mitigation.
Moments like that have mattered in the development of our relationship with the team at London Wall. They have grown rapidly and very successfully over the last 7 years and we have worked closely with their team, constantly putting ourselves in their shoes to help them stay ahead.
Our team have a wealth of experience advising private banks and alternative lenders on everything from:
Fladgate played a pivotal role in guiding Nickleby Capital, the lead investor in Seat Unique's £7m Series A round. This transaction is exemplary of our commitment to delivering bespoke solutions for our clients, underscoring our proficiency in steering complex situations with efficiency and precision.
Nickleby Capital stands as a distinguished private investment office, which builds direct investment portfolios for entrepreneurial investors. Its recent investment, Seat Unique, is an event services firm that operates a premium ticketing marketplace. This unique platform grants fans VIP access to outstanding live events, partnering with notable clubs such as the Rugby League World Cup, Hampshire Cricket, and Wales Rugby.
The Series A funding is instrumental in bolstering Seat Unique's partnerships with influential event organisers and broadening their reach to a more expansive audience. Fladgate's team, helmed by Corporate Partner Ian Brent, and supported by Associate Ellie Green, offered counsel to Nickleby Capital throughout this transaction. Our team's expertise in early-stage investment market practices earned high praise from Latika Vij, COO at Nickleby Capital. “We have worked with Fladgate in a number of investments now and remain impressed with the speed, expertise and pro-active nature that Ian and his team brings. Special mention to Ellie Green, who has a great knowledge of market practice in early stage investments.”
The partnership between Nickleby Capital and Fladgate has produced a series of successful investments in cutting-edge companies. Nickleby Capital’s philosophy of adopting a private equity outlook on managing venture risks, its strategy of targeting growth-stage companies, and its portfolio of disruptive businesses spanning industries like healthcare, consumer goods, and technology dovetail seamlessly with Fladgate's ethos. In the case of Seat Unique's Series A funding round, Fladgate's involvement epitomises how we not only facilitate growth for businesses but also contribute to the industry innovation and disruption they bring. We take immense pride in enabling the success of such ventures.
We were bursting with pride to see our client Tripledot Studios named the number one fastest growing company in Europe by the Financial Times.
The mobile gaming company recently boasted over 50 million monthly active users, generating approximately $1m of revenue per day. Howard Watt, partner in our corporate team, has advised Tripledot since incorporation in 2016, helping the founders set up the capital structure ahead of their first fundraising in November 2018 - an $8m seed round led by Velo Partners.
From there, Tripledot raised an eye-watering $68m in a Series A funding round led by Access Industries, Eldridge Industries and Lightspeed Venture Partners in April 2021. The company's upwards trajectory became even more pronounced when that round was followed less than a year later by a whopping $116m Series B in February 2022 - a round which valued the company at $1.4 billion and was led by 20VC (Harry Stebbings).
Alongside the fundraisings, Tripledot recently called upon Fladgate's tier 1 expertise in M&A for its cross-border acquisition of mobile entertainment firm Live Play Mobile, and regularly works with our specialists in IP, data protection, commercial contracts and employment as it continues its remarkable journey.
Akin Babayigit, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Tripledot commented (in feedback we couldn't be prouder to receive): "I can't put into words how much we owe Howard and the team at Fladgate. Ever since our inception, we have been working extremely closely with Howard, and we owe him so much. Simply put, he is the best legal professional we have had the chance to work with. He is ridiculously smart, exceptionally savvy, super personable, extremely punctual and very commercially minded. It makes such a big difference to have such a trusted adviser (and honestly an incredible friend) by your side."
Having advised Zappi on its early stage investment by Prime Venture, it was exciting to support them on a significant $170m investment from funds advised by Sumeru Equity Partners, a prominent US private equity house. Zappi runs an AI-powered consumer insights platform that is used by major brands including PepsiCo, McDonald's and The HEINEKEN Company.
It was a real team effort in getting this across the line before the Christmas break, working very closely with the Zappi management and in-house legal team. There were over 1,000 documents being negotiated over the course of this complicated cross-jurisdictional transaction. It was particularly interesting having to exchange (and check) signed documents on these hundreds of documents within a matter of hours so funds could be transferred in time for completion – we had to mobilise assistants across the corporate team to hit the tight timeline. What’s more, there were some complex regulatory issues around exchange control to navigate in South Africa (where one of the major shareholders was based). This required detailed technical analysis and structuring advice, requiring us to liaise with local counsel.
Wojtek Kokoszka, COO and Board Director at Zappi, commented: “Without a doubt Zappi would not have been able to complete this deal without the professional and broad tech and corporate experience that Fladgate assembled. The breadth of international deal-making knowledge and calm deal navigation brought by Ravi and his team was exceptional and we look forward to a strong, long partnership with Fladgate as Zappi goes from strength to strength.”
Monish Suri, Partner at Prime Ventures (VC), an early investor in Zappi, commented: “The Fladgate team provided a first class service. This was a complex deal involving some difficult cross-jurisdictional issues, and transacted at a time when the markets were challenging. Fladgate showed great professionalism and tenacity in navigating it through to a successful closing.”