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Carl Hotton

Partner
About

Carl has a broad corporate practice with extensive experience advising on a wide range of corporate transactions, with a particular focus on the Insurance sector and the Financial Services sector.

Carl has significant experience advising clients on transactions in the insurance sector, including in the non-life, life and Lloyd’s markets. Carl’s experience includes advising insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries and financial sponsors on domestic and cross-border M&A, insurance portfolio transfers, reinsurance transactions, strategic investments and JVs, group reorganisations and related insurance regulatory matters. Carl’s experience also includes advising banks, asset managers, fintech and insurtech companies and other players in the financial services markets on their corporate transactions.

Carl has been recommended in recent editions of Chambers and Partners for corporate insurance transactions. He is quoted as being “a very practical, user-friendly and articulate lawyer whose judgment clients trust” and as a lawyer with “a growing reputation in the London insurance market” and as someone who is “on top of all the moving pieces of a deal”. Carl has spent time on secondment in Shanghai, China working on international M&A involving Chinese companies and at a global insurance broker during his career.

Professional QualificationsSolicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales

EXPERIENCE

  • Advising a high-profile mutual life insurer on its complex restructuring and sale to a life and pensions consolidator via a scheme of arrangement and Part VII transfer transferring close to GBP6.2bn of policyholder assets.
  • Advising a private equity consortium led by a global alternative investment manager on its acquisition of a top-five Lloyd’s business for USD950m from a multinational Asian insurance group.
  • Advising a global insurance group on the sale of its UK run-off subsidiaries to a non-life run-off consolidator owned by private capital, including related reinsurance arrangements.
  • Advising a Lloyd’s insurance business on several transactions including (i) its acquisition of another Lloyd’s business and related reinsurance to close of existing syndicate liabilities, (ii) the inward investment by a strategic investor and (iii) raising in excess of USD450 of new equity in a Lloyd’s context.
  • Advising a leading global reinsurance and insurance company on several transactions including (i) its acquisition of the mature savings business from a financial services and asset management company for GBP650m and (ii) its acquisition of the heritage life and pensions business from a British multinational wealth management company for GBP425m.
  • Advising Lloyd’s of London on its market wide Brexit restructuring and the transfer of all non-life Lloyd’s business to a new European entity and the related reinsurance arrangements.
  • Advising a global insurance corporation on several matters including (i) the sale of its interest in a Lloyd’s business to the investment division of a large state owned pension fund (ii) its Brexit restructuring and transfers of its UK and European business and (iii) an acquisition by its life insurance division.
  • Advising a global professional services firm on the transfer of GBP3.4bn of longevity risk liabilities from its UK pension fund to reinsurance capital.
  • Advising a global US bank on several transactions including its (i) acquisition of the UK’s largest online wealth manager, (ii) acquisition of an equity management platform and (iii) investment into a payments business.
  • Advising a global bank on its defence against an activist campaign coordinated by one of its largest shareholders calling for a break-up of the banking group.
  • Advising a West Coast multinational transportation company providing ride-hailing services on several cross-border transactions in Europe.
  • Advising the financial sponsor and management sellers of a leading independent oil and gas company on its sale to a multinational energy company for USD4.9bn.
Languages
  • English
  • Finnish
Education
  • University of Southampton, LLB

  • College of Law, London, LPC

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