Andrew Peddie

Expertise

Andrew is an experienced company lawyer and Head of our Reading office. He has expertise in private and public M&A and corporate finance, private equity, joint ventures, corporate reorganisations and all other aspects of corporate law.

In the first part of his career in the City, Andrew worked on a variety of transactions mainly for large international businesses, with a focus on the oil and gas, IT, telecoms and manufacturing sectors. Since 1996 Andrew has mostly been based in Thames Valley, and the majority of his practice has been in private company M&A, alongside acting for a number of AIM-listed companies, and often in the technology sector. Since helping to establish Gateley’s Reading office in 2016, Andrew has been increasingly involved in private equity backed transactions, while continuing to act for corporate acquirers, and owner managers on exits.

In 2015 Andrew was voted “Thames Valley Lawyer of the Year” and in both 2018 and 2019 he was also shortlisted for the same award. The Gateley Corporate team he heads in Reading has won Law Firm of the Year in both 2018 and 2020 at the same awards event.

How do you help clients?

I help clients to transact mergers and acquisitions, whether by acquiring other companies or businesses, or acting for owner managers selling the business they have built up and so realising its value. In the course of that work I help clients to identify the risks present in the companies they are looking to acquire, and to manage those risks through the purchase documentation, or in the case of sellers to limit their potential liability for known or unknown risks present in the companies they are selling.

I also help clients to document joint ventures, corporate reorganisations and other aspects of company law practice, advising them on the legal issues to be tackled and how to deal with them, so as to eliminate potential legal problems with those activities arising in the future.

Experience

1. Acting on all of CACI Limited’s acquisitions in the UK since 2003, which has included a wide variety of IT consulting, telecoms, marketing and data businesses, including most recently Purple Secure Systems, Spargonet Consulting and Mapmechanics.
2. Advising Lloyds Development Capital on two MBOs during 2018, of the speaker manufacturer Martin Audio in June 2018, and of British Waterways Marinas Limited from Canal & River Trust in December 2018.
3. Acting for Cohort Plc, the AIM-listed defence group, and its operating subsidiaries on a range of acquisitions since 2007, including the acquisitions of SEA, and J&S Limited, and the disposal of its Space division to a joint venture run by Thales and Finmeccanica.
4. Acting for the selling shareholders of many private companies and businesses including GAMMA Associates, Powerpax UK and Mortons Travel.
5. Acting for Babble Cloud Holdings Limited on two acquisitions in 2018, including of Arden Communications Group in October 2018.