Warners Solicitors
Warners is a leading law firm in Kent committed to providing quality advice to its clients. Warners offers a wide range of legal services to individuals, businesses, and organisations of all sizes. Warners is known for its innovative legal approach and its dedication to client care. Warners’ Corporate team acts for a range of clients, from startups to established global companies. Warners advises clients on a variety of corporate matters, including mergers & acquisitions, MBOs, restructuring, refinancing, joint ventures, private equity investments, share incentive plans and dealing with partnership matters. Warners’ Corporate team offers sound and tailored advice to businesses, backed by the quality and depth of its team’s experience. The Corporate team is able to call on the expertise of other departments in the firm, including Commercial, IP&IT, employment law, commercial property and dispute resolution. Warners is regularly recognised by the leading legal directories Chambers & Partners and Legal 500 as offering some of the best legal advice in the region.
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Brief synopsis of the firm
Warners is one of the oldest law firms in Kent, tracing its origins back to 1785. The firm is known for its innovative legal approach and dedication to client care. We have 26 partners and over 130 staff members based in offices in Tonbridge and Sevenoaks. Warners is committed to providing quality advice to its clients and offers a wide range of legal services to individuals, businesses, and organisations of all sizes. We are regularly recognised by the leading legal directories Chambers & Partners and The Legal 500 as one of the leading firms in the region for offering pragmatic and high-quality legal advice.
Team including the structure and any specific specialisms.
Warners’ Corporate Team acts for a range of clients, from startups to established global companies. The Team advises clients on a variety of corporate matters, including mergers & acquisitions, MBOs, restructuring, refinancing, joint ventures, disposals, private equity investments, share option schemes and dealing with partnership matters. The Team offers sound and tailored advice to businesses, backed by the quality and depth of its team’s experience. The Corporate Team is able to call on the expertise of other departments in the firm, including employment law, commercial property and dispute resolution.
Andrew Hawkins is Head of the Corporate Team and advises clients across a number of sectors, including healthcare (veterinary, pharmacy, social care and dental), IT, security, property development and retail. He works with entrepreneurs, owner-managers, SMEs, large corporates, banks, LLPs, partnerships and individuals. Andrew has particular expertise in the veterinary sector, having acted for one of the largest veterinary Corporates on its high volume of acquisitions for a number of years at a previous firm. He has completed a number of high-profile deals in that area, acting mostly for sellers of late and also advises on practice start-ups and shareholder matters.
Kevin Sullivan leads the Commercial & IP Team and the TMT practice areas. Kevin manages clients through the development stage and the lifespan of their businesses, from start-up (or acquisition) through to exit. In addition to advising clients local to the office in Kent, Kevin acts for clients throughout the UK and abroad, including listed companies, often advising on cross-border transactions and dealing internationally with lawyers both on the other side of the transaction and on the same side in association (often working closely with local counsel in other jurisdictions, many through the Alliance of Business Lawyers of which Warners is a member).
Andrew and Kevin are supported by Jessica Cox and Samiha Begum. Jessica trained with the firm and qualified into Corporate in September 2021. Jessica has particular experience dealing directly with owner-managers and SMEs with regard to all commercial aspects of their business as well as leading on share and asset sales and acquisitions. Samiha is currently a trainee within the team.
Details of a recent transaction in which you have been involved.
Warners were delighted to receive the KCFA Deal of the Year Award 2023 for its role in acting for Infinity Group on its acquisition of RedkiteCRM Limited in September 2023. This was a deal with an ESG angle to it with RedkiteCRM being a dedicated provider of Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions, products and managed services to the Social Housing sector in the UK. What made this deal important is that Infinity Group now has the opportunity to make an impact in a sector that is crying out for change, a sector that can embrace transformation for good to improve people’s lives.
The Team worked alongside both the Corporate Finance Team and Corporate Tax Team at Crowe UK LLP, led by Geert Struyven and Emma Reynolds respectively. Acquisition Finance was provided by HSBC Bank PLC. The deal itself was made complex by the consideration structure that had to reflect the different revenue streams in the business and the intercreditor issues that had to be overcome to the satisfaction of the Bank and the sellers. Having worked closely with the Senior Management team for several years, we knew just how important this acquisition was for the Group and its growth strategy so were really pleased to get this over the line for them.
Thoughts on the year ahead.
Andrew commented: “It’s been a really interesting year and an exciting one for me personally. I joined Warners in May 2023 as Head of the Corporate Team with the aim of building on the firm’s fantastic reputation it already has in other areas and helping to make the Team and the firm more widely recognised for its expertise in the Corporate Finance community. Winning the KCFA Deal of the Year certainly helps!
I’ve known Warners my entire career and worked with them on the odd transaction but what’s really struck me since joining are the number of fantastic clients we already have here and the quality of enquiries we receive from prospective new clients interested in working with us. I have a great team and always on the lookout for the best talent to come and join us.
We are seeing some exciting leads come into the firm from both existing and new clients and across all sectors, with sales and purchases ranging in value from £50,000 to £10million.
A number of clients are looking to reorganise their company structures for implementation of share option plans or in preparation of an exit event. We also have clients who are looking to make strategic acquisitions or to exit completely. Whilst 2023 M&A activity in the region is reported to be significantly down on previous years, our experience in the SME market is that clients will continue to pounce for the right opportunities, smaller-sized clients in certain sectors are still finding things challenging and forced to sell to larger competitors (brokering those deals themselves) but succession issues remain as strong as ever for others looking to retire. We are therefore looking forward to a busy year ahead working alongside some of the highly experienced Corporate Finance professionals we are fortunate enough to have here in Kent.”
Meet the team.
Left to right: Andrew Hawkins, Jessica Cox and Samiha Begum Kevin Sullivan
