I’m an associate in the Corporate Energy group in London. I studied English at Bristol University, and I joined Herbert Smith in September 2007 as a trainee.
Why choose Herbert Smith?
Herbert Smith is a very nice place to work. It’s got a good culture. It’s fun, it’s varied. I think the thing that really attracts people to Herbert Smith is the people - the people, who you get to work with and the teams we have here. I liked Herbert Smith from the start. I very much liked the people who interviewed me and everything about it when I came, and that’s borne out throughout my training contract and through my qualification as an associate.
The EDF deal
In 2010, EDF sold its regulated and non regulated electricity distribution assets to a consortium including Cheung King Infrastructure and Hong Kong Electric for approximately five point eight billion pounds. The aim of the sale was to raise funds to reduce EDF’s debt and to enable increased investment by EDF in new nuclear in the UK. The deal was cited as being one of the biggest deals in Europe by a North Asian company, and also the biggest deal by a Hong Kong entity in the UK. EDF was also advised by Deustche Bank, PWC, Barclays Capital, and Mott MacDonald.
We helped EDF in gathering together key contracts, understanding what they had got, and where it was located, and helping them decide on the best sale structure. My work included due diligence of these contracts, the asset companies and the regulatory environment, contributing to due diligence reports and strategy documents. I also drafted, negotiated and agreed certain key contracts to assist in the sale process, such as with third parties and customers. It was good to be able to stay with the deal from a trainee through to being an NQ, and get to understand how the issues that I’d first looked at when working on the deal played out at different stages of the sale process.
It was hard work throughout. As an NQ I was responsible for my own work, overseeing some trainee work, and also ensuring that the work of the wider team was joined up. That meant attending conference calls and meetings almost daily, and making sure that client instructions got circulated round the wider team as it needed to be. I also got to work increasingly with the client directly, in particular the commercial teams, managing and running face to face meetings, sometimes on my own. This was interesting work, and rewarding because you got to understand more about the business and the concerns of the client, and see the deal through their eyes.