How do you usually explain your job to someone outside the legal or finance world?
I help people borrow or lend to buy or build large commercial spaces like offices, hotels and shopping centres. My job is to make it easy to do this safely and carefully.
How is your team adapting to capture new opportunities in UK and European structured finance and real estate?
We were early to understand the back leverage market for UK and European assets. This has enabled us to become respected voices in the loan-on-commercial real estate (CRE) loan world. We are able to deliver the kind of commercially minded, technically sound advice the market demands.
What are the biggest challenges your clients face right now, and how are these shaping the deals you’re seeing?
Clients want to close good deals with strong, defensible returns, so the capital stack is becoming more layered and sophisticated. This is shaping how transactions are structured and driving demand for clear, strategic legal support.
Looking ahead to 2026, what top three trends are driving activity in your practice area?
First, the opportunity for European CRE, increasingly viewed as a stable asset in a stabilising environment; second, more ‘slicing and dicing’ of debt to meet different risk profiles; third, increasing transaction volumes as financing conditions settle.
With Winston & Strawn and Taylor Wessing merging to form Winston Taylor, how does the combination strengthen your team’s ability to capture cross-border deals and grow market share?
Once ‘live’, Winston Taylor will offer exactly what our clients have been asking for: a seamless transatlantic platform advising on complex transactional, regulatory and litigation matters. With our expanded depth and reach, we’ll be able to respond to client needs to the same exacting standards across increased geographies.
How will the merger change the way your team works – in terms of collaboration, client access, or the types of mandates you can take on?
Once everything is finalised, being part of a bigger, deeper platform in the UK and Europe as Winston Taylor, we’ll just be able to do more for our clients across the board.
I expect transaction volumes to increase substantially and, if the new cycle tracks the last, many clients will want to move quickly. We’ll be deeply and broadly resourced to help our clients make the most of their opportunities.
If you weren’t practising structured finance and real estate finance law, what career path might you have pursued – and why?
I’d probably be in hospitality management – something like [in] The Night Manager [series], but without the guns, espionage or danger – and ideally on the day shift. I think it’s the idea of delivering crisp curated perfection somewhere suitably glamourous that appeals.
Looking back, what advice would you give your younger self?
Stress less about being good at everything, just have fun trying, learning and improving.