Kate is an experienced financial services and banking and finance professional. She heads both the investment funds and the banking and finance practices of Voisin Law and in recent years she has sat on a number of working groups related to these areas.
Her regulatory and funds practice specialises in the legal, regulatory and corporate governance aspects of investment funds, and holding companies and managers. She particularly enjoys dealing with complex legal and regulatory issues. Her experience includes the formation and maintenance of regulated, private and unregulated investment funds (including Sharia’h compliant vehicles) as well as restructuring distressed funds. She has successfully made first of their kind regulatory applications with respect to the funds she advises.
Her banking and finance practice focuses on advising on large corporate borrowing transactions, predominantly relating to commercial real estate groups borrowing from conventional lenders and debt funds. The debt is regularly £100m +, often involves 30+ corporate entities and multiple lenders providing senior and mezzanine debt at various points across the group.
When Kate Anderson decided on a legal career, it was as much a surprise to her as it was to people around her.
Taking a tip from her father, who was an accountant, she first sat a business studies A level and later sat a degree in management sciences, which had a module in company law. Kate liked it so much that she then took the EU law module and her tutor – clearly seeing a lot of promise in the young Kate – recommended she take up law as a career.
“Really? A career?” Kate recalls asking. “I really hadn’t thought of that, so I said, ‘OK’, why not!’”
It was a momentous decision that would involve lifestyle changes, financial hardships (“I sold everything to pay for my law degree and the Bar Vocational Course”) and eventually relocating out of the UK. After searching for a good firm to work for in London, Kate was advised by a friend to look at Jersey as an alternative location to start her legal career. The rest – as writers quip – is history…
Moving to Jersey
I still wasn’t convinced I wished to do only litigation and so I started writing to Jersey firms. I originally wanted to go into criminal law – like most people – but most Jersey firms aren’t looking for criminal lawyers due to the legal aid system here.
“So I landed a few interviews and travelled to Jersey on a glorious summer’s day. Had the interview at Voisin Law and they told me they’d be willing to split my time between commercial law and commercial litigation, so I took the job, came over to settle and have never looked back.”
Soon afterwards, Kate also started to move away from litigation focusing more on corporate and regulatory funding issues: “There are a lot of us out there who think they’ll go into litigation. Actually, I don’t know why I thought I’d be a litigator, because I first got into law after doing my management degree and it was business law that I loved. I’m originally a barrister and I like negotiating. I’m good at it. In fact, I’m probably better at it than the adversarial side of things. My view over the years has been that when you enter into adversarial stuff, nobody wins.”
“But when you live in Jersey, it’s never really too much of a hassle. Everything is easy and it’s very self-contained. Do I miss the UK? Yes, Southeast England certainly, but I have no plans to go back there to live anytime soon.”
These days Kate advises on setting up investment vehicles that range from corporate group structures to retail funds. Kate also specialises in regulatory and corporate governance on large corporate deals, historically focused on property involving borrowing from lenders and debt funds generally.
“I set up these structures and they’re relatively complex because they’re often highly geared,” Kate says. “So you end up with one property holding company that may have four or five companies in the chain. We set up the structure; the vehicles to own these. And the property side of the transaction is dealt with in the country where the property is; it’s never Jersey.
“It’s important to remember that all this also has a regulatory overlay in terms of what regulatory regime does it need ensuring it falls in the right place for the client.”
Banking and finance practice
After a few years working at Voisin Law, Kate set up the banking and finance practice. The idea came after she eyed an opportunity while advising clients on large corporate borrowing transactions, initially for property deals but more recently in various sectors, particularly technology.
“In about 2008, it started to become apparent that this could be fun and quite a lucrative part of the business, and it serviced our clients in these holding structures.
“To start with it was only really me and the partner I worked with in the business who did any of this work, but as it was so successful I’ve since started training up other juniors. Eventually, I ended up as the head of department, essentially setting up a banking and finance practice from scratch.”
“Complex structures – but a huge amount of fun”
It wasn’t long before Kate and the team were working on debt transactions around the £100 million-£200 million mark. She admits deals can often be highly complex involving up to 40 companies on just the borrowing side. Kate finds them exhausting to work (“I sit in a darkened room and just go for it!”) because the funding structures are often so byzantine in their complexity, but they’re also “a huge amount of fun”.
“For example, we worked on one from December last year until April and it had three different lenders in it. It had senior mezzanine finance and the properties in it. There were five different properties involved in terms of five different hotels and five different groups. And that involved about 25 companies across the transaction. The whole deal has to be worked through and the project properly managed – very complex.
“We used three different borrowers and worked with two different law firms; two different law firms on the other side, one acting for two of the borrowers, so two teams within one law firm. Then you have the UK law firms for the lenders and then you have ours as well. Then you have all your tax advisors to make sure that the transaction is carried out correctly and all the regulatory and compliance issues are met.”
“So I landed a few interviews and travelled to Jersey on a glorious summer’s day. Had the interview at Voisin Law and they told me they’d be willing to split my time between commercial law and commercial litigation, so I took the job, came over to settle and have never looked back.”
If that wasn’t enough, Kate has also helped to set up a sharia umbrella fund for clients doing business in the Middle East: “We now have a lot of experience working with sharia-compliant funds, which are governed by the requirements of Sharia Law. The key to that work is to be able to speak the language. And it’s a mindset; very culturally specific.”
Clients keep coming back
Along with the UK and Middle East, Kate’s other main clients tend to be American – and regardless of location, the majority of clients are recurring or are recommended:
“Yes, the vast majority are recurring. A lot of them are very long-standing. I still have the one that we started off with in 2008. And you get to know them; you build a relationship and understand what they’re like, what they need, what their business is doing, the highs and the lows.”
As well as working on complex funding deals and heading up the banking and finance practice, Kate also enjoys mentoring the younger lawyers coming through the firm: “We’re about developing people, developing careers etc. I really like that side of things. It’s very fulfilling.”
Jersey lifestyle
Away from the office, Kate is still in love with the Jersey lifestyle and lives only a few minutes from the office – and the beach. “It’s two minutes away,” she says. “When my children were little (they’re now teenagers and don’t want to know me – she laughs), we would get to go to the beach in the evening after work. Paddleboard. Go swimming. “It’s a nice place to be and to live in.”
Kate is also an avid runner and always goes jogging during her lunch break: “I do it to make sure I get out and actually get the fresh air because otherwise by the afternoon you can see the four walls of your office and go a bit stir crazy. You have to force yourself to do these things.
“But when you live in Jersey, it’s never really too much of a hassle. Everything is easy and it’s very self-contained. Do I miss the UK? Yes, Southeast England certainly, but I have no plans to go back there to live anytime soon.”
