Diane is a Partner in our Corporate and Commercial teams.
Diane has considerable experience of advising businesses, charities and social enterprises, in a broad range of corporate and commercial matters, including commercial contracts, mergers and acquisitions, business start-ups, restructuring, shareholder arrangements and exit, banking and re-financing projects, compliance and risk management, company secretarial and joint ventures.
Corporate & Commercial Law
Diane regularly acts for privately owned businesses or as outsourced UK legal counsel for the UK subsidiaries of multi-national organisations based in countries including the USA, China, Canada, Finland, Japan, Germany and the Netherlands.
She is a ‘highly recommended’ lawyer in corporate and commercial sector in Legal 500 listings and is also experienced in advising third sector clients on commercial, structuring and governance matters and has worked with a number of national and multi-national not for profit organisations, including charities and sporting organisations.
In addition to experience gained working as outsourced legal counsel for in-house teams, Diane has also worked in-house within the legal team of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games during 2010. During this time, Diane prepared contracts for the operation of various World Cup and other sporting events making up the London 2012 programme “London Prepares”.
Charity Law
Diane’s work encompasses a variety of charity and social enterprise structures advising on constitutional and governance issues, mergers and restructuring, trading and commercial relationships, business contracts to supply services, company secretarial services, dealings with the Charity Commission and other regulators and international operation and arrangements.
She has been a trustee of the Prince Philip Trust Fund and an Executive Board Member of Henley Women’s Regatta, the premiere regatta for women in the UK.
Work Highlights
- Advising a waste management company on its multi-million-pound purchases of a hazardous waste collection business and a chemical treatment plant.
- Advising on a tender for Manchester City Councils waste collection and street cleaning services, including negotiating the contract terms.
- Advising the members of an LLP on the retirement of a member and changes to the LLP agreement.
- Advising a property development business on incorporation and the creation of a group structure to mitigate development risk.
- Advising a US-based global tech and consumer electronics retailer on website terms of use, privacy policy, cookie policy and consumer rights.
- Advising a US-based web hosting company Global Compliance Director on compliance with relevant environmental legislation.
- Advising the individual shareholders of a City-based political and regulatory advisory firm on the sale to a global consultancy business.
- Advising the entrepreneur behind a luxury fragrance business on establishing a new European distribution network.
- Advising a leading bank on the terms of and security for a multi-million pound loan being made to a charity operating a private school.
- Advising the members of yacht club run in Putney on the incorporation of the club and transfer of assets into a new company limited by guarantee.
- Advising the committee of an annual rowing event in Henley on the incorporation of the event as a company limited by guarantee and the future governance of the event.
- Advising the board of Leap, the Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes County Sports Partnership, a not for profit organisation, and one of 49 County Sports Partnerships nation-wide on structure and future governance.
- Advising a leading bank on the terms of and security for a multi-million pound loan being made to a charity operating a private school.