Happy Second Birthday to the Corporate and Commercial Team

The Corporate and Commercial Team at Hughes Paddison is celebrating its second birthday this month.  In the first two years, the team has worked on around 50 transactions with a total deal value of around £50 million ranging from a £9 million company sale to a £20,000 acquisition of a retail business. 

Jon Rathbone, head of the team, said “I am delighted with the quality and quantity of the work that we have been involved with to date and our pipeline going forwards.  The speed of the department’s growth is a testament to the quality of the work and client base of Hughes Paddison as a whole.  We have only been going for 2 years and already looking to recruit a senior corporate and commercial solicitor to join as the 4^th lawyer in the team.”

Jon’s experience as a corporate lawyer at Osborne Clark, commercial lawyer at DAC Beachcroft, in-house lawyer and entrepreneur mean that he is able to quickly identify the issues which the client needs to address and takes a proportionate approach to getting the desired outcome.  From his own experience setting up a business, Jon understands that clients need transparency and control of their costs as well as a pro-active approach to getting the job done.  The success of this approach is demonstrated by what their clients have to say about working with them.

“When it came to sale of the business we quickly realised that we needed expert commercial legal advice in our negotiation with the buyer. Working with Jon and Danielle of Hughes Paddison was a positive experience. After an initial consultation they provided us with a clear outline of their fee structure, an initial estimate for our costs, periodic updates of the cost to date and ample warning of unforeseen cost over-runs. They were particularly effective in helping us to decide which contract issues were important to ‘push-back’ on and which were acceptable for us to reach agreement with the buyer. In addition they were very diligent in promptly responding to interactions with the buyer, chasing up 3^rd parties (which sometimes involved out-of-hours work due to trans-Atlantic time differences) and generally progressing the negotiation. In short: competent, expert legal advice delivered by nice people!”

Will Clark, former director of Oxford Scientific Software Ltd

“Jon Rathbone has been a hugely valuable and trusted advisor to Swoop Travel, supporting a wide range of legal questions from shareholder agreements, to supplier contracts and GDPR compliance. In every instance he's provided expert counsel, an exemplary turnaround time and great empathy for the challenges and opportunities of a £10m turnover company.” 

Luke Errington, Managing Director of Swoop Travel Limited

Please contact Jon Rathbone at jdr@hughes-paddisons.co.uk if you would like more information about how the team could help your business.