Law Firm Continues Its Strategic Growth Programme

Leading national law firm Irwin Mitchell announces a further major appointment in its London office with the appointment of Ayesha Hasan as a Real Estate Partner.
 
Ayesha was previously a partner in the real estate department of Locke Lord. Prior to joining that firm in 2012, she had spent the majority of her career at Berwin Leighton Paisner, where she also spent time on secondment to restructuring and insolvency teams and also banks.
 
Ayesha has a broad range of real estate experience in transactions, both acquisitions and disposals, landlord and tenant work, real estate finance, insolvency, restructuring and enforcing security as well as corporate support. Her expertise lies in real estate investment, real estate finance and insolvency-related real estate. She has worked for a wide variety of clients from high net worth individuals to some major property companies, traditional and non-traditional lenders as well as receivers and IPs. Her deal expertise includes working on such high profile real estate deals as the administration of Blockbusters, the sale of the Cumberland Hotel, and the joint venture between UBS and Oxford Properties to develop Watermarket Place, a building on which she subsequently worked on the letting to Nomura.
 
This appointment is the latest in a series of senior appointments at Irwin Mitchell as it drives forward its strategic growth plan for its Business Legal Services division. Last year (May 13/14) the firm appointed 22 new partners, 10 of whom were in its business division.
 
In terms of real estate, Irwin Mitchell has seen significant growth over the past four years. In May of this year, Rob Thompson took over as Head of the London Real Estate team from former head Jon Vivian, who remains as a senior real estate partner. Rob was one of the four partners in the 20 strong real estate team that came over from SJ Berwin in November 2010. The team has been growing ever since and as well as bringing a number of significant clients to Irwin Mitchell, including Prestbury/Max Properties, IDI Gazeley, British Land, Redevco, Honda and Raven Russia, the client list has been supplemented with new clients including  Ellandi Retail Fund, Caudwell Properties, HSS Hire Service Group, Mercer Real Estate Partners, and Wells Fargo. The London team now consists of 12 partners with a total team of 30. It is one of the jewels in Irwin Mitchell’s national real estate practice which also has offices in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham, and numbers around 80 lawyers.
 
The National Real Estate Team came Runners Up in The Lawyer’s recent Real Estate Team of the Year Awards, based on its growth and ability to take on highly complex high value deals. Last summer Rob led the London team that advised on the acquisition of the Eurohypo loan book by two major US equity funds - a £4 billion real estate loan book - which was one of the largest European commercial real estate debt transactions ever.
 
Commenting on Ayesha’s appointment, Rob Thompson said: 

Ayesha Hasan added:

Expert Opinion

I too am extremely excited to be joining a firm such as Irwin Mitchell where real estate is a real jewel in the crown. I look forward to becoming part of a close knit ambitious team, with an ever growing impressive client list and track record and playing my part in helping that development further.”
Ayesha Hasan - Partner