Emilie Stewart > Sidley Austin LLP > London, England > Lawyer Profile

US firm Sidley Austin LLP continues to consolidate its position in the London real estate market; handling big-ticket deals covering a wide range of real estate assets, including hotels, logistics, retail and leisure, alternative residential and offices, among others. Practice co-leader Lyndsey Laverack has considerable experience in forward purchase and funding transactions, as well as acting for private equity funds on their investments into real estate assets, while team co-leader Jade Williams-Adedeji handles sales and acquisitions, landlord and tenant matters and portfolio management. Emilie Stewart, who ‘takes no prisoners in negotiations’, and Paul Dunbar joined the team from Vinson & Elkins LLP in August 2021.

Sidley Austin LLP‘s real estate finance team has ‘excellent technical skills‘ and Emilie Stewart is strong on cross-border transactions and is praised as ‘a highly skilled technical lawyer’.

Sidley Austin LLP joins the ranking on the strength of its deep bench of structured finance experts, who are ‘very knowledgeable in the securitisation area and show tremendous subject matter expertise across structural and regulatory aspects‘. The firm is best known for its manager-side work on CLOs, though it is also highly skilled in the securitisation of auto loans, NPLs, CMBS and consumer assets. Head of global finance Rupert Wall is an acknowledged expert in securitisation, particularly CLOs. He acted for Permira Credit in several public CLO transactions, among them the €410m Providus V European CLO, which was the first CLO in which Jefferies acted as arranger and which involved a number of innovative features such as a senior facility utilising a repo and two SPVs. He also advised blockchain company Ivno on an innovative asset-backed blockchain structure involving the issuance of tokens on a closed blockchain. Clients remark that he is ‘able to deploy his extensive experience and deep technical skills to the most challenging transactions‘. Senior counsel Nick Brittain has extensive experience across all asset classes, and Emilie Stewart, who joined from Vinson & Elkins RLLP, brings experience in real estate private equity and NPL transactions.