Simon Witney joins Travers Smith

Private equity lawyer Simon Witney has joined Travers Smith as a senior consultant.

He joins from Debevoise & Plimpton where he has been special counsel since 2017. Prior to that Witney was a consultant at King Wood & Mallesons between 2013-2017, having spent 13 years as a partner at SJ Berwin.

Witney is a notable member of the UK and European private equity industries, having served in senior positions at trade associations throughout his career. He is currently a member of the BVCA council, which focuses on the association’s strategy and oversight. Witney also previously chaired its legal and accounting committee.

He is also a current member of Invest Europe’s professional standards committee and financial services-regulatory working group, having previously chaired its tax, legal and regulatory committee. He has also been a member of the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association’s legal and regulatory council.

As a prominent figure in the industry, Witney is widely recognised for his PhD on the corporate governance of private equity-backed companies, which he completed at the London School of Economics in 2017. Since 2018, he has been a visiting professor in practice in the university’s law department, where he teaches private equity law on the LLM programme.

In his new role, Witney joins the firm’s team specialising in servicing clients in the international private capital market across its regulatory, transactional and fund formation practices.

Having worked with the private capital team at Travers Smith over the years, Witney said he is honoured to now join them. “As business leaders and investors continue to embrace the inexorable move to more sustainable strategies and responsible business practices, I strongly believe that an active ownership model will thrive. In a world that increasingly expects business to play its part in creating a fairer and better society, private capital will be a force for good as economies recover from the COVID crisis.”