Deborah Harris

Deborah Harris is Senior Counsel in the Firm’s London Corporate Department. She focuses her practice on equity capital markets and has extensive experience representing clients on IPOs and other equity capital markets transactions. Deborah provides advice on all aspects of law, regulation and market practice applicable to U.K.-listed companies and has a key role in supporting the Firm’s Capital Markets Practice.

Deborah was previously an executive director in the investment banking division at Goldman Sachs where she worked predominantly on IPOs, including financial sponsor IPOs, out of London and Paris and was authorised as a registered representative with the FCA for capital markets transactions. She was subsequently a partner at a Magic Circle firm and has previously spent time on secondment at Lazard.

Deborah is a member of the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA) working group relating to the review of the U.K. listing regime and has contributed to annual editions of “Lexology Panoramic: Initial Public Offerings,” which provide comprehensive overviews of the IPO market in the United Kingdom.

Deborah’s recent representations include:

• Rosebank Industries plc in its admission to trading on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange and its placing of ordinary shares
• Certain investment funds affiliated with Blackstone Inc. in connection with the approximate £2.7 and £2 billion accelerated bookbuild offerings of shares in London Stock Exchange Group plc and multiple other significant offerings of ordinary shares in London Stock Exchange Group plc and related buyback transactions
• Refinitiv in its $27 billion sale to London Stock Exchange Group plc
• Apax in connection with multiple significant block trades of ordinary shares in Baltic Classifieds Group PLC
• Bridgepoint Group plc in its IPO on the London main market as well as a number of financial sponsor-backed London IPOs, including Baltic Classifieds Group PLC (Apax), Calisen PLC (KKR), Auto Trader Group PLC (Apax), Ascential plc (Apax) and Pets at Home Group Plc (KKR), and KKR in connection with the IPO of The Hut Group
• Bridgepoint on its addition of ECP to its platform, to create a €57 billion global private markets asset manager
• Melrose in its demerger of the GKN Automotive, GKN Powder Metallurgy and GKN Hydrogen businesses into a new independent holding company, Dowlais Group plc, which was listed on the London Stock Exchange
• Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Nordea and DNB Markets in connection with an underwritten rights offering by Millicom International Cellular S.A.
• KKR in connection with the accelerated bookbuild offering of ordinary shares in the capital of Darktrace plc

Deborah received an M.A. in Law from Christ’s College, Cambridge, and the Law Society Finals qualification from the Guilford College of Law. Deborah is admitted to practice in England and Wales.