ADVICE FOR PRIVATE EQUITY EXECUTIVES

We provide advice for Private Equity Executives on their exits, restrictive covenants, carried interest, financial and equity entitlements, forfeiture risk, and potential disputes with their PE firms.

PE Executives choose us for our leading reputation and expertise in handling PE Executive matters with multi-jurisdictional, cross-border partnership and employment matters.

As a firm we have strong international relationships with specialist advisers to individual PE Executives in key overseas jurisdictions. Our team have a deep knowledge of the PE industry and specialise in employment and partnership law, or corporate and partnership law.

We understand the common needs of Private Equity Executives, including:

• PE Executive exits where the senior individual is leaving to join a competitor, and facing a potential breach of restrictive covenants, with the risk of losing valuable carried interest or equivalent financial entitlements, and of legal action by their former firm, including where they may seek to prohibit the executive from working for the period of a non-compete.
• PE Executives joining a new firm, who want advice on the terms of their individual arrangements, and the carry and co-invest schemes in which they will participate, together with the relevant good leaver/bad leaver provisions and vesting terms to which they will be subject.
• Where a founder of a PE firm is seeking to substantially change the equity or management arrangements potentially to the detriment of the PE Executive.
• Where the PE firm has taken steps which prejudice the interests of the PE Executive, or is otherwise acting unlawfully in breach of their express or implied contractual obligations.
• Compulsory exits of PE Executives, frequently with aspects of bullying, harassment, unlawful discrimination and/or whistleblowing dismissal or detriment, including where the executive is performing a GC or Compliance function.

PE Executives benefit from our strong expertise in the private equity sector and our knowledge of how these matters are typically resolved in practice. They benefit from our market leading employment and partnership expertise, and our experience in both advising on and litigating disputes in these fields. Our market knowledge combined with our expertise in resolving disputes that involve both partnership and employment law (for example carried interest  rights under the LPA, and whistle blower protections) mean we have a unique perspective and skill set that we can bring to bear to the benefit of our PE Executive.

As carried interest arrangements tend to be multi-jurisdictional, PE Executives benefit from our access to specialist lawyers in the key relevant overseas jurisdictions, with whom we work regularly on these matters, including (but not limited to) in the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Scotland and Luxembourg.

For further details on our expertise, please download our Private Equity brochure.