Katharine Collard

Katharine is a corporate lawyer specialising in both domestic and international joint ventures, equity capital markets transactions, mergers and acquisitions. Her expertise spans the mining, retail and consumer, financial services and technology sectors.

Katharine spent nine months on secondment to HSBC in the group M&A and strategic innovation investments team, where she advised on numerous investments in financial and enterprise technology companies. Her experience includes advising on the set-up of joint ventures to establish distributed ledger technology platforms and other market infrastructure platforms, together with their associated governance arrangements.

Work highlights

• HSBC: advising HSBC on the sale of its Canadian banking business (HSBC Canada) to the Royal Bank of Canada for $13.5 billion.
• Investec: advising the dual-listed company on the distribution of a further 15% of Ninety One, the global investment manager, to Investec shareholders.
• Dr. Martens plc: advising the underwriters on the £3.7 billion IPO of Dr. Martens plc.
• Anglo American plc: advising the multinational mining company on its £405 million recommended cash acquisition of Sirius Minerals Plc. 
• A global consortium of banks and other financial market participants: advising the consortium on the establishment of a joint venture company, Fnality International, as part of the wider Fnality payment systems project.
• De Beers: advising on the acquisition of the remaining 50% stake in De Beers Jewellers from its joint venture partner, LVMH-Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton S.E.

Further work highlights include:

• ORIX Corporation and ORIX Aviation System Limited: advising ORIX on its US$2.2bn acquisition of a 30% interest in Avolon Holdings Limited, a leading global aircraft leasing company.
• Nestlé S.A.: advising on its acquisition of a majority stake in Tails.com, an online direct-to-consumer business in the pet food industry.
• EOS Precious Metals: advising a consortium of global banks and the World Gold Council on the establishment of a joint venture company to operate a precious metals trading platform.
• Argus Media Limited: advising the global energy and commodity price reporting business on the US$1.5bn sale of a majority stake in Argus Media to General Atlantic LLC.
• Deutsche Börse AG: advising Deutsche Börse on its recommended proposed all-share merger of equals with London Stock Exchange Group plc (ultimately not completed due to the European Commission decision not to approve the merger), which was to be implemented by means of a UK scheme of arrangement and a German public takeover offer.