Abigail Owen

Abigail works across London and the South East but primarily in the Gatwick and Brighton areas and has been a leading corporate lawyer in the region for more than 20 years.
 
Her reputation is that of a dealmaker forging strong commercial alliances to drive deals that add value to clients.  As one of the ‘go to’ lawyers in the south east, she advises on complex regional, national and international M&A transactions involving a range of business types and industries.
 
Her experience extends to advising on mergers, investment, shareholder and JV arrangements, restructuring, banking and re-financing, non-contentious insolvency and corporate governance work; her key speciality is corporate sales and acquisitions.
 
Clients include entrepreneurs, owner-managers, mid-market companies, SMEs, PLCs, international corporates, private equity, banks and financial institutions, joint venture parties, LLPs, partnerships and individuals.
 
Her broad sector experience covers services such as insurance and recruitment through to manufacturing, retail & distribution, and service industries.

Notable deals

• Advising on the private equity investment into Lightning Fibre Limited, an infrastructure supplier involving fibre-to-premises, by Foresight Group
• Advising on the sale of Ashtons Hospital Pharmacy Services Ltd, involving a management buy-out backed by a private equity investment by LDC
• Advising on the sale of Posturite Limited, a UK-based market-leading ergonomics company, to US global office supplies manufacturer, Fellowes International Group
• Advising on the sale of specialist health and safety e-learning provider Workrite Ltd to Ideagen PLC
• Advising Southdown Holdings Limited and Sutton Business Centre Limited on the sale of their substantial property businesses at Sutton Business Park and Sutton Business Centre to Netherlands based industrial and commercial property group, Capital Industrial B.V.
• Advising Broomer Farm Investments Limited on the share acquisition of Harbour Way Country Club Group
• Advising on the sale of specialist family owned insurer, Highworth Insurance Limited to the Aston Lark Group, one of the top five chartered insurance brokers in the country
• Advising on the sale of British Converting Solutions, the UK’s leading manufacturer of box making machinery, to German buyer, Kolbus, part of an international group
• Acting for Hunt and Palmer PLC on its share acquisition of Aircraft Chartering Services Limited

Personal awards

Abigail was named South East Corporate Lawyer of the Year in two consecutive years at the Insider Dealmakers Awards; she also won Corporate Deal of the Year in 2018 acting on the sale of a minority stake in Posturite Limited to US international group Fellowes.  Abigail was once again shortlisted for Corporate Lawyer of the Year in 2020.
 
She is consistently recommended as a leader in the field in the leading legal directories, Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners.  The 2021 edition of Legal 500 recognises her once again as ’leading individual’.  In the 2020 edition of Chambers and Partners, clients describe her as having "acute attention to detail" and being "highly skilled in M&A transactions".