Law firm Trowers & Hamlins, has recruited partner Lynne Rathbone to head up its corporate team in Exeter, the firm's second largest office to its headquarters in London.

Lynne joins from Browne Jacobson and brings over 13 years' experience advising on all aspects of corporate and commercial work, including mergers & acquisitions, restructuring and equity investment as well as major projects, complex contracting arrangements, factoring, joint ventures, agency, franchising, outsourcing and ADMs.

International law firm Trowers & Hamlins has recruited Edward Hooper, expanding its corporate team in London.

Edward joins from Taylor Vinters and brings over 14 years' experience in advising companies, directors, institutions and private shareholders on a broad range of corporate transactions. His expertise includes IPOs, fundraisings, public and private M&A, joint ventures and restructurings, many on an international scale.

Dentons is pleased to announce that Bennett Wong has joined the Firm as a partner in our Corporate, Securities and Corporate Finance, and Mergers and Acquisitions practice groups.

Based in Calgary, Bennett acts as a trusted business advisor for clients in a wide variety of sectors, including oil and gas, mining, chemical, life sciences, healthcare, e-commerce, technology and real estate. He is highly regarded for his pragmatic and proactive approach to bring value and results for his clients.

Ashurst has advised leading renewable energy company Edify Energy and the project consortium on the development of a battery storage system to be connected to the large-scale Gannawarra Solar Farm in Victoria (the Gannawarra Energy Storage System), which upon completion will be one of the largest integrated solar and battery facilities in the world (and the largest in Australia).

Ashurst has advised UBS AG, Australia Branch (UBS) and Veritas Securities Limited (Veritas) as Underwriters on Freedom Foods Group Limited's (Freedom Foods) A$200 million equity raising.

DLA Piper has advised the shareholders of Nettitude, a market-leading provider of cyber security services, on its sale to Lloyd's Register Group (LR), one of the world’s leading providers of professional services for the engineering and technology sectors.

The acquisition strengthens LR’s existing portfolio to provide market leading cyber security services to clients, including penetration testing, information security consulting, managed security services and incident response handling.

DLA Piper has advised leading Chinese car services and rental company Yestock Car Rental Company Limited ("Yestock") on a share equity financing and strategic cooperation with Didi, a major Chinese car-hailing, ride-sharing, artificial intelligence and autonomous technology conglomerate backed by Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu.

The equity financing from Didi and other investors will provide Yestock capital support to continue its business expansions.

DLA Piper won a significant victory for its client, 7-Eleven, in a putative class action that was filed against 7-Eleven in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Eversheds Sutherland Ireland are delighted to build upon our long-standing relationship with the Australian listed IVF Group,  Virtus Health, on its conditional acquisition of the IVF unit operated by Complete Fertility Clinic at the University College Hospital, Southampton.  The Australian stock exchange filing is attached below.

Our New York, Paris, London, and Amsterdam offices represented The Bank of New York Mellon in connection with the restructuring of international geosciences services provider CGG, one of the largest French restructurings ever.