Alastair Peet > Shoosmiths LLP > Birmingham, England > Lawyer Profile

Shoosmiths LLP Offices

Shoosmiths LLP
103 COLMORE ROW
BIRMINGHAM
B3 3AG
England
Visit website 03700 864000 08700 864001

Alastair Peet

Alastair Peet photo
+443700864163 alastair.peet@shoosmiths.co.uk View profile View profile

Work Department

Partner, Corporate

Position

Alastair heads our national venture capital practice group and is nationally recognized for his venture capital expertise.

Alastair’s focus is on venture and growth capital, advising both institutions and companies/founders on start-up through funding rounds, M&A, and ultimately exit. He is passionate about helping clients with both day-to-day and strategic issues through their life-cycle.

Key clients include Octopus Ventures, Triple Point, Gresham House, DIF Capital, MML Capital Partners, BGF, and numerous start-up and scale-up companies, typically technology enabled. Alastair and his team have market leading expertise in advising on investments involving Venture Capital Trust (VCT) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) tax complexities.

Recent experience includes advising:

  • Octopus Ventures on over 60 investments in the past two years, including its series C investment in cybersecurity business Digital Shadows, its series B investment in short term retail space provider Appear Here, and investments into Secret Escapes, Token, Chronext, Depop and others. Alastair also advises Octopus Ventures on exits including of Swiftkey to Microsoft, Evi to Amazon, Tails.com to Nestle, and the IPOs of Zoopla and Eve Sleep;
  • Oxford Capital Partners on investments including into savings platform Moneybox and insurance disrupter Wrisk;
  • Harbr on its $38.5m investment round led by Dawn Capital and Tiger Global;
  • Burda Principal on the Series D investment in florist Bloom and Wild;
  • MML Capital and management of Learning Curve Group on their exit to Agilitas;
  • BGF and management of CAD reseller Solid Solutions Management on investment by LDC;
  • US investment bank Cowen on its leading a $61m late stage investment into biotech firm F2G;
  • Amber Infrastructure, manager of the National Digital Infrastructure Fund, and DIF Capital on investments into fibre broadband providers; and
  • Oxford Nanoimaging on its Series C investment from Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI) and others.

Career

Trained Eversheds; qualified 1999; associate Eversheds 2004; partner Shoosmiths 2006 to date.

Education

Manchester Grammar School; University of Birmingham (1996 LLB 2(1)); De Montfort University at the University of Birmingham (1997 Legal Practice Course).

Leisure

Avid follower of Liverpool FC, spending time with young family, hiking.

Lawyer Rankings

London > Corporate and commercial > Venture capital

(Leading individuals)

Alastair Peet – Shoosmiths LLP

Led from Birmingham by the ‘excellent’ Alastair Peet but operating very much as a unified national practice with other key resources in Reading and London, Shoosmiths LLP provides ‘sensible, actionable and practical advice’ to an increasingly balanced mix of investors and investees. Peet remains a popular choice among prominent fund clients, including Octopus Ventures, which benefit from his ‘very collaborative and consensual approach’ to transactional work as well as his intimate knowledge of the underlying documentation, having himself played a key role drafting and updating the model documents for the BVCA. Along with the ‘knowledgeable and commercial’ Alastair Hammerton, who heads the Midlands corporate team, Peet has also been at the forefront of utilising document automation, AI review, and data analytics to deliver efficiencies and insights for clients. In London, the ‘very knowledgeable’ Steve Barnett is ‘well connected in the venture capital market in Europe’, providing ‘very practical’ advice to his core company side roster, as well as a growing number of institutional investors on early stage funding. Other key members of the national team include Thames Valley-based corporate partner Sanjeev Sharma, whose work encompasses a significant amount of venture capital mandates; Reading-based tax partner Tom Wilde, who is a key resource on the crucial tax aspects associated with the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCT); and the ‘excellent’ Helen Burnell, who leads the firm’s spHERe initiative to support female founders and venture capitalists. All named practitioners are based in Birmingham, unless otherwise noted.

West Midlands > Corporate and commercial > Corporate and commercial: Birmingham

Jointly helmed by VC specialist Alistair Hammerton and experienced commercial contracts lawyer Simon McArdle, Shoosmiths LLP’s Birmingham team draws high praise from clients for its ‘strong commercial acumen’ – especially in the manufacturing, recruitment, tech, infrastructure, retail and data sectors. The team is especially noteworthy for the strength of its venture capital practice, anchored by the efforts of VC team head Alastair Peet. National corporate chair Ben Turner – who splits his time between the firm’s London and Birmingham offices – works with various household names on M&A and PE-driven work, often with a cross-border element. Helen Burnell focuses especially on VC and infrastructure sector matters, advising on a slew of investment transactions.

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