People
Sophie Jermine
Biography
Sophie is a corporate strategic advisor, advising on private capital clients throughout the life cycle of their investments.
She specialises in special situations, complex cross-border structuring, operating and financing international corporate groups, governance and mentoring. She has a particular focus on U.S.-based investors, working closely with these investors and their US-based advisors who need an on-the-ground proxy to help them push forward the investors’ UK/EU investments and global footprint expansion plans and involve the right local experts at the right time.
She is often engaged by private capital investors on ‘first of their kind’ investments in a diverse range of sectors and geographies and/or where the investors have hit a roadblock and are in need of a quarterback. Sophie is known for putting in place innovative and complex group structures and tailor-made governance and finance arrangements that are bespoke for and reflect the ethos of the investor group in question. Particular strengths of Sophie are her knowledge and understanding of fund structures, operations and preferred jurisdictions plus the types of tax and regulatory matters that are typically relevant to private capital investment groups.
She also has extensive financial restructuring experience, having acted on many substantive and high-profile financial restructurings, including the historic restructuring of the Icelandic banks, and has a strong interest in, and co-leads our Family Office group, seeking to help single and multi-family offices with setting up investment firms and platforms, and making discrete, complex and high value private capital investments in the UK and EU private sectors.
Practice areas
- Corporate and M&A
- Funds and asset management
- M and A JVs and corporate reorganizations
- Private equity
- Public company advisory and corporate governance
Sectors
- Private capital
- Sovereign wealth and institutional investors
- Capital solutions
- Sports
- Private equity
- Family office
Selected experience
- A trusted advisor for 18 years and counting to one of the oldest investment managers of its kind under continuous management with multiple billions of AUM (deal and sector types include distressed investments, special ops, joint ventures, IPOs, hospitality, retail, mining and cyber security) (some of which is previous firm experience).
- A high-profile US wealth management and investment firm and a sovereign-backed global alternative investment manager on their global footprint expansion projects, including setting up a regulated investment advisor firm to cover the UK and Europe (previous firm experience).
- A US-headquartered private capital investment house and the portfolio group on the structuring, financing and operation of a multi-billion euro Continental European regulated life insurance group, involving 40+ entities in 7+ jurisdictions.
- An investment fund group and the target groups over a 13+ year period on the structuring and operation of, distressed investments into and exits from, two major UK retail groups (including an offshore captive insurance business) (some of which is previous firm experience).
- A US-headquartered hedge fund on the liquidation of its UK regulated investment advisor firm (previous firm experience).
- A US-headquartered global fashion retail group on a range of English corporate matters post-restructuring (previous firm experience).
- An investor group on a JV structure and acquisition financing for the acquisition of a controlling stake in a Bermudan-based asset manager that specialises in property catastrophe reinsurance and retrocession investments (previous firm experience).
- An investor group on the structuring, financing and operation of an international litigation funding business and related joint venture with one of Australia’s leading litigation funding firms (previous firm experience).
- A high-profile financial institution on the equity aspects of mezzanine debt investments in, and corporate governance arrangements for, various investments, including in: a Bermudan-headed international lighting specialist borrower group; a global manufacturing borrower group; and a corporate group that designed and supplied queue management products to a number of industries (previous firm experience).
- Creditors on many financial restructurings and post-restructuring corporate group structures, including: an ad hoc committee of holders of securitised bonds issued by into Metrocentre Finance plc in relation to the Metrocentre shopping centre in Gateshead (previous firm experience); a bondholder committee on the restructuring and post-restructuring corporate governance of Kaupthing, a major Icelandic bank (previous firm experience); the Nordic trustee, on behalf of the bondholders, in the financial restructuring of US$500 million senior bonds issued by OSX3 Leasing B.V., a stressed Brazilian E&P and offshore group (previous firm experience); and the noteholders of Wind Hellas, a Greek telecommunications operator, on a €3.2 billion debt restructuring via a pre-packaged administration sale and on a €1.8 billion mezzanine debt-for-equity swap through a UK scheme of arrangement (previous firm experience).
Education
- L.P.C., BPP University Law School, England
- B.A., University of Durham, England
Admissions
- Solicitor, England and Wales