Private Funds Formation

We advise private fund sponsors and investors across credit, private equity, venture, secondaries, real estate and infrastructure. With decades of experience in private capital, we pair deep technical expertise with efficient execution and value for money. In a fast-moving market, our specialist, responsive advice delivers precise, practical solutions on complex issues and to tight timetables.

Our work spans structuring, formation, marketing and ongoing operations. We work closely with colleagues in our Financial Services Regulation, Finance, Tax, ESG, Employment and Corporate teams. This breadth lets us design efficient structures, implement team incentivisation and co-investment arrangements, and support capital deployment across both liquid and illiquid strategies. 

We act on closed-ended, open-ended and increasingly on hybrid/evergreen vehicles and regularly structure funds in the UK, Ireland and Luxembourg, as well as lighter touch environments such as the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands and with our law firm partners in the US, Middle East and Asia. Clients range from global institutions to specialist boutiques, and we are experienced at coordinating complex, cross-border mandates and aligning terms with market practice across strategies. We are adept at negotiating with sophisticated LPs to balance investor protections while preserving sponsor flexibility and commercial outcomes.

We maintain a leading practice in the crossover product development area where sponsors are looking to allocate private assets to portfolios in products for distribution to mass affluent, HNW type channels. Products seeking to offer investors some liquidity, with good governance and a strong control environment, often packaged in a regulated framework.

We also have a select leading investor practice, which helps inform us on market developments and terms.

We provide tools and insights that accelerate execution. Our Lawtech team streamlines burdensome workflows, automating MFN processes and integrating document management and data-sharing platforms, to reduce costs and errors and improve the investor experience. 

Our Investor Intelligence service supports client BD and IR teams with global investor and jurisdictional research, operational due diligence design and market-term comparisons. 

Work highlights include advising:

• Hayfin Capital Management LLP on its European direct lending strategy, gathering €3.5bn, and on its special opportunities strategy, which attracted total commitments of €2.2bn;
• 17Capital LLP on the closing of 17Capital Strategic Lending Fund 6, which has successfully held a final closing at $5.5bn;
• Polus Capital Management on the launch of its first closed-ended commingled special situations fund, Polus Special Situations Fund, which has raised commitments of approximately €890m, in excess of its original target;
• Aberdeen on the successful fundraising of Aberdeen Standard Core Infrastructure III, Aberdeen's third European core infrastructure fund, which has closed with total commitments in excess of €500m;
• on “first and final” closing of fund, GCP Fund VI, at its hard cap for long standing client Growth Capital Partners;
• leading UK mid-market private equity investor CBPE on its latest fund, CBPE Fund XI, which has closed at £714m; and
• European corporate special situations investor Alchemy on its latest fund, Alchemy Special Opportunities Fund V (ASOF V), which has closed in excess of its initial fundraising target with €1bn in capital commitments; and
• Legal & General on its strategic partnership with Blackstone, establishing semi-liquid fund structures to enable Legal & General’s clients to access Blackstone’s private credit origination platform.