Ropes & Gray Named Transatlantic Firm of the Year at The British Legal Awards 2021

Rankings & Awards
November 18, 2021

Global law firm Ropes & Gray has been named Transatlantic Firm of the Year at The British Legal Awards 2021, for the spectacular progress made by the firm in becoming the UK’s leading transatlantic private capital law firm.  Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Ropes & Gray’s London team enjoyed its strongest ever performance in 2020, with clients entrusting the firm with their largest and most complex deals.  These included advising: 

  • Baring Private Equity Asia on the US$1 billion+ acquisition of Lumenis, the Israeli-headquartered global leader in the field of minimally-invasive clinical solutions for the aesthetic, surgical and ophthalmology specialties
  • GHO Capital on its acquisition of Envision Pharma, a UK-based medical and scientific communications company
  • Partners Group on its acquisition of a major equity stake in Rovensa, a leading Portuguese-headquartered provider of specialty crop nutrition, biocontrol and protection products, from Bridgepoint
  • Virgin Media and O2 on the £5.7 billion-equivalent financing and joint venture combination of O2 and Virgin Media by Liberty Global and Telefonica (one of Debtwire’s top 10 deals of the year)
  • Next Alt S.à r.l on the financing of its take private bid for Altice Europe
  • Liberty Global on the financing arrangements for its proposed acquisition of Swiss telecoms group Sunrise Communications Group 

The firm also made five significant London lateral investments, with the arrival of partners Matthew Czyzyk and Samuel Norris building out the firm’s restructuring and special situations capabilities, Tom Alabaster and counsel Chris Townsend strengthening the firm’s private funds capabilities and partner Lincoln Tsang reinforcing the firm’s life sciences practice. 

In 2020, the firm also founded the R&G Insights Lab, the industry’s first-ever analytics and behavioral science offering, recognised by the FT Innovative Lawyers Awards 2020, with London partner Amanda Raad, who co-founded the offering, named by the FT as a top ten most innovative individual practitioners of 2020