Bio

Sharon Ayres is a corporate lawyer with around 30 years' experience of helping clients secure a preferential outcome on transactions. She handles every deal with a passion for achieving the best result for her clients, finding solutions to the trickiest of issues. Sharon specialises in private investment funds and complex joint ventures largely in the real estate sector (with particular interest in retail, industrial, student accommodation, housing and regeneration, BTR, and mixed use); she also advises on private equity funds, hedge funds, renewable energy funds; infrastructure funds and a variety of social impact investment fund/structures. Her projects include advising on EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) and Seed EIS investment funds, equity crowd-funding and investment structures involving public sector bodies investing alongside private investment and more recently private REITs as a result of the recent relaxation of the regulations. In addition to advising on the formation of investment funds (and the subsequent acquisitions/divestments made by such funds, refinancing and restructuring exercises) Sharon developed a specialist team that advises institutional investors on taking key interests in large investment funds. Advice is given swiftly and cost effectively. Having advised on many restructurings and refinancings of complex cross-border structures following the global financial crisis that began in 2007, she is very mindful of the additional protections that can be included in documents to give clients peace of mind. Sharon also advises on complex joint ventures (whether corporate, partnership, trust-based or contractual in form) often involving multiple jurisdictions. Her team are specialist at managing cross border projects in a seamless fashion. Sharon also leads our Governance team – which forms part of our ESG task force (a specialist team with experts drawn from across the firm to handle the diverse and evolving range of support our clients need in the area of ESG matters). Sharon regularly provides advice and guidance at Board level on the governance aspects of ESG. Sharon's clients include fund managers, funds, investors of all types and in particular institutional or high net worth individuals, family offices, joint venture partners, asset managers, real estate developers and entrepreneurs, operators and business angels.