Nabarro

Nabarro Profile & Stats

If you know anything about Nabarro, it probably has to do with real estate. But that is slowly changing and the firm now covers many corporate issues to go along with its main focus. With only four offices – London, Sheffield, Brussels and Singapore – Nabarro isn’t exactly an international heavyweight, but with a young, energetic and enthusiastic management team, the firm could soon give its larger rivals a run for their money.

Nabarro's origins can be traced back to two separate firms that united after World War II. By 1958, the principals Leslie Nathanson and brothers Felix and Alan Nabarro, merged their firms to form Nabarro Nathanson – an eight partner, 60 employee practice, dealing with property, litigation, company commercial and family law work.

Numerous mergers and moves later, the firm settled in Holborn, central London, in 1999. In February of 2007, Nabarro joined the slew of other firms eager to ditch its old-fashioned image and insisted on ‘first name terms’ – dropping the ‘Nathanson’ in the process. A year later the firm converted to a limited liability partnership and since then has climbed up the rankings of major UK M&A league tables, also debuting internationally.

Although Nabarro’s office network is relatively small for a big firm, it uses a number of informal alliances with other European practices for access to foreign clients. Nabarro has established ties with French firm August & Debouzy, GSK Stockmann & Kollegen of Germany and Italy’s Nunziante Magrone.

Nabarro is best known for its property work and regularly handles complex, multi-million pound real estate transactions. Within this discipline the firm covers property finance and property litigation, planning and environment, PFI and PPP; but it is probably the projects team for which it is most renowned. The firm’s real estate client list reads like a who’s who of the industry: Jones Lang LaSalle, Land Securities, Quintain Estates and Great Portland Estates. In fact, Nabarro’s commercial real estate group includes six of the top 10 real estate companies in the UK.

In addition to its cornerstone practice, Nabarro is also making strides in the corporate arena, advising on M&A, management buyouts and securities flotations. It has advised repeat clients such as Spark Ventures and Balderton Capital on the venture capital side, and in 2011 its litigation team successfully defended Ryanair in a civil aviation authority ruling. Finally, Nabarro is increasingly getting a foothold in private equity by advising management teams in management buyouts. The firm's other standout clients include Apple, Bank of Ireland, JP Morgan Chase, GE Capital Corp, the BBC Pension Trust, HSBC and Oxford University.