Ashar Qureshi, Partner, Fried Frank

Ashar Qureshi advises on international corporate transactions, including capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate finance.

Ashar is managing partner of Fried Frank’s London office and head of our EMEA Global Transactions Practice. International financial institutions, including underwriters, as well as corporations and governments seek Ashar’s representation on IPOs, equity and debt securities (including high-yield), complex hedge fund and private equity transactions and structures, rights offerings, and restructurings and privatizations. His practice covers Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Ashar is consistently recognized as a leading practitioner in legal directories, including Chambers Global, Chambers Europe, Chambers UK, and Legal 500 UK. Chambers UK recognizes him in Capital Markets: Equity, where a client notes that he is “incredibly smart and conveys complex legal issues in an easy manner.” Another client praises him as a “very impressive operator.” Legal 500 UK recognizes Ashar in Debt Capital Markets, describing him as “simply one of the very smartest, most innovative and all-around best lawyers in London.” He is praised for making the “practice unique” and clients note he is “an amazing lawyer and dealmaker.” Ashar is also recognized by IFLR 1000 in the Capital Markets: Equity and M&A categories.

Prior to joining Fried Frank, Ashar was a partner at a large international law firm. He was also previously a founding partner in multibillion-dollar hedge fund and the executive vice chairman of Renaissance Group.

Conor Lawlor, Managing Director, Capital Markets and Wholesale, UK Finance

Conor directs and manages the delivery of UK Finance’s cross-cutting international and Brexit workstreams. His focus is around market access regulation and trade in services. His role covers policy development, strategic planning and senior stakeholder engagement.

Prior to joining UK Finance, Conor worked across a range of UK government departments including HM Treasury, where he worked on financial crisis intervention schemes and was a member of the Government Economic Service (GES). Most recently, Conor spent a number of years at UK Financial Investments, the body that has responsibility for managing the government’s shareholdings and loans in financial assets, where he was responsible for work on Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.

Matthew Scullion, Founder and Chief Executive, Matillion

Matthew Scullion is the co-founder and CEO of tech unicorn Matillion.

Matthew began his career as a software and IT professional and went on to build and lead high-performing teams at both large enterprises and small startups. He founded data productivity provider Matillion in 2011 to help struggling companies turn their data into meaningful insights.

Today, Matillion helps thousands of customers across the globe - including Docusign, Western Union, Slack, Tui and Cisco - to build and manage pipelines faster for AI and analytics - at scale.

Matthew has been named E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year UK, Datanami Person to Watch, and serves on the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce.

Michael Aherne, Partner, Herbert Smith Freehills

Michael is a Partner in the Pensions team with particular expertise in the pensions aspects of public and private M&A and pensions issues within the energy sector.

Michael has a wide interest in all areas of occupational pensions law with a focus on advising both corporate and trustee clients on large scale benefit change exercises and complex transactional work.

Michael has particular experience of pensions in the Energy Sector, having advised clients such as E.ON, EDF Energy, Chevron and Iberdrola, as well as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investment issues for pension schemes and corporate sponsors.

Tom Godwin, Partner, Freshfields

Tom is a partner in our capital markets group, specialising in public and private capital markets transactions and advising listed companies. His experience includes equity offerings of all types, acting for issuers, underwriters, and private capital sellers, and recently includes acting for CVC on its €14bn IPO in Amsterdam, Haleon plc on the £2.4bn global offering by its largest shareholder and related £315m off-market buyback, the issuer and Goldman Sachs Asset Management on the IPO of Petershill Partners, and advising on capital raises by SSP, Grainger and National Express.

Charlie Lytle, Chairman of Corporate Broking, Goldman Sachs

Charlie is head of Corporate Broking and Equity Capital Markets in the UK. He has more than 25 years of experience in banking, providing equity advice on strategic events to large companies throughout the UK. Charlie joined Goldman Sachs as a managing director in 2016.

Prior to joining the firm, Charlie worked at Citi, Hoare Govett and Cazenove. Earlier in his career, he trained as a barrister-at-law.

Charlie serves as a trustee of the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust, a mental health charity focused on young people.

Charlie earned a BA in History from York University, a Diploma in Law from City University and is a barrister-at-law.

Claire Suddens-Spiers, Co-Head of Equity Markets Solutions, Rothschild & Co; Chair, TheCityUK’s Capital Markets Group

Claire has worked for Rothschild & Co for 27 years and Co-Heads Rothschild & Co’s Global Equity Market Solutions practice, which combines all of Rothschild’s public and private equity capital markets related capabilities. She is based in London but also spent more than a decade in Asia.

She has considerable expertise in managing complex and high profile transactions globally and is a specialist in advising on IPOs, equity capital raisings and sell-downs for corporates and governments across the world.

She has advised on more than 100 capital market transactions across Europe and the Middle East, Asia and the US.

Mark Austin CBE, Partner, Latham & Watkins

Mark Austin advises clients on a full range of public and private securities offerings as well as M&A and general corporate matters across multiple sectors. He leverages extensive experience to guide market-leading companies and investment banks on initial public offerings (IPOs), rights issues and open offers, placings, mergers and acquisitions, and general corporate work. A recognized industry leader, Mark is a member and former Chair of the Listing Authority Advisory Panel, the practitioner panel that advises the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on primary markets policy and regulation issues. He also serves on the FCA’s Markets Practitioner Panel and The London Stock Exchange’s Primary Markets Group.