Andrew Yates

Andrew is a partner and heads our growing corporate and commercial team. He has over ten years’ experience dealing with corporate and business matters working with clients across multiple sectors including pharmacy, charity, banking and private wealth. Andrew regularly works with investors, companies, LLPs and partnerships, from family run businesses and start-ups to a broad spectrum of private limited companies and unquoted public companies.

Andrew is recognised by the Legal 500 directory as a “next generation partner”.

Expertise

Corporate/M&A

Andrew works with clients on their acquisitions, disposals, investment/shareholders’ agreements, share schemes, bespoke articles of association (with different classes of shares, drag & tag, good & bad leaver provisions, growth shares), loan notes, commercial agreements (including supply, distribution and e-commerce), company administration and share buy-backs.

Andrew hosts board meetings on behalf of his clients (including for a major landowning industrial and provident society) and deals with board/general meeting minutes and resolutions. Andrew has become the first port of call for company secretaries.

Andrew’s technical expertise on share rights and corporate structures is second to none. He offers his clients a quality of work which is difficult to find outside the City.

Andrew works closely with our employment and litigation teams on disputes between directors and shareholders.

Banking and Finance 

Andrew leads the firm’s transaction finance offering to a national high street bank. He advises banks, and others on lending and taking security such as facility/loan agreements, debentures, corporate and personal guarantees, intercreditor arrangements and deeds of subordination. Andrew acts for banks providing funding for acquisitions, including reviewing transaction documents.

Healthcare (pharmacies) 

Andrew acts for buyers and sellers of pharmacies, whether asset or share sales/purchases. His pharmacy sector experience also allows him to advise banks/funders on lending to the purchasers of pharmacies and ensuring that the relevant regulatory consents (such as from NHS England) have been obtained. Acting for lenders in this sector means Andrew appreciates the different perspectives and approaches to transactional matters.

Charities 

Andrew leads the firm’s charitable offering for incorporated charities such as companies limited by guarantee and charitable incorporated organisations (or “CIOs”). He advises on company and connected charity law matters, such as mergers, acquisitions, disposals, amending articles of association, advising on directors’ duties, board meetings and company filings as well as preparing commercial contracts.

Recent work highlights include:

• Advising a retail trading company on the multimillion-pound asset sale of its business (including six retail stores)
• Advising individual sellers on the share sale of a pharmacy and subsequent acquisition of a care home business
• Advising two individual sellers on a share disposal of their software and cloud trading business together with a separate corporate joint venture with the buyer
• Advising an investment vehicle for an angel investor on the investment of six figure start-up capital together with the advance of funds by way of a secured term loan to a number of companies
• Advising a high street bank on the lending of funds to a limited company buying a pharmacy
• Advising a private second ranking lender (out of five) on the terms of the lending and security documents required to fund a multimillion-pound commercial property development.
• Advising a tech company on a founder shareholder dispute
• Advising a charitable company (limited by guarantee) operating a golf club on its articles of association

In Touch

Andrew studied history and politics before undertaking the Graduate Diploma in Law and the LPC at the College of Law (York). Andrew qualified in 2009, joined Debenhams Ottaway in 2014, rising quickly through the firm becoming a partner in 2019.

Andrew is a director of and runs a residential management company (limited by guarantee), is a member of the firms’ corporate and social responsibility committee, a member of the Law Society, member of the Charity Law Association (CLA) and previously the treasurer of the Letchworth Round Table charity. He is a keen sportsman, playing football, tennis and golf. Andrew is a judge on the panel of the Funding Network Hertfordshire, a charity crowd funding event that the firm sponsors, click here to visit their website.