David Martin

David is a corporate partner in the London office's financial sponsors group and co-head of the firm’s Telecoms, Media and Business Services sector team. David regularly works on transactions in the infrastructure sector, with a particular focus on digital infrastructure.

He advises on mergers and acquisitions, consortium deals, co-investments, financial sponsor exits (including equity capital markets transactions), joint ventures and carve-outs, often with a cross-border element.

David regularly advises on competitive cross-border transactions, offering clients the benefits of the firm’s global reach to achieve their global objectives. This experience includes advising on transactions (notably in the infrastructure sector) across major jurisdictions in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

David previously worked in the Middle East, where he helped establish and run the firm’s Abu Dhabi Office.

David is also Global Diversity Partner, working closely with the firm’s dedicated D&I team, to deliver the firm’s global D&I strategy.

Work highlights

David has advised on a variety of financial sponsor, infrastructure and Middle East-related corporate deals. These include advising:

• Digital Colony on its joint venture with Liberty Global, AtlasEdge, to establish a European edge data centre platform

• USS, advising the UK’s largest private pension scheme, on its £295m equity investment in G.Network
• Vantage Data Centers, supported by Digital Colony Partners, on the establishment of its European hyperscale data centre platform, and the acquisitions of Etix Everywhere and Next Generation Data
• Digital Colony Partners on the acquisition of Wildstone and other European digital billboard assets and the establishment of its European digital billboards platform
• Arqiva (owned by a consortium of investors, including Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets, CPPIB, IFM Investors and Whitehelm Capital) on the sale of its telecoms division (towers business) to Cellnex Telecom S.A. for £2 billion
• Nestlé S.A. on its sale of Nestlé Skin Health, a leading global provider of skin health products, for an enterprise value of CHF 10.2bn
• Nestlé S.A. on its investments in to IVC Evidensia (IVC), a leading European veterinary services provider
• Morgan Stanley Infrastructure on the acquisition of Omtel from Altice
• Jacobs Holding on the acquisition of Cognita from Bregal Investments and KKR
• Sovereign related entities on strategic investments in global infrastructure, including toll roads, power and utilities, airports, ports, rail and towers
• DP World on the establishment of a global investment platform with CDPQ and the sale of two Canadian ports and the acquisitions of Dubai Maritime City, Dry Docks World and Unifeeder SA
• the acquisition of Lease Plan Corporation, from a joint venture involving Volkswagen and Fleet Investments
• Dubai World and Port & Free Zone World on the disposal of Economics Zone World, which operates Jebel Ali Free Zone, to DP World
• the sellers on the disposal of their Maldivian seaplane businesses to Blackstone

Earlier in his career, David spent seven months on secondment to the group legal department of Vodafone Group.

David moved to Abu Dhabi in 2011 in order to help set up the firm’s second office in the UAE and returned to London in 2017.

David studied law at the University of Nottingham.

Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales.