Corporate partner with 25 years' corporate finance experience playing a leading role in a dynamic and focused group of corporate lawyers. Focused on M & A transactions and looking after the corporate law needs of a highly valued set of Wragge & Co clients and corporate finance intermediaries.

Tel: +44 (0)20 7864 9501

Email: maurice_dwyer@wragge.com

Best brains in ...

Deal structuring, deal structuring and deal structuring. With this must come excellent lawyer and draftsman skills. I kind of realised I might be attracted to this when, as a raw young trainee in a magic circle law firm, I drafted freehand all through the night a 40 page joint venture agreement without consulting the firm's precedents (I didn't know there were any!). The partner I was reporting to thought it was excellent! I also pride myself on seeing the big commercial picture for the client without losing sight of the detail - was it my hero Pele who was said to have 180 degree vision?

Highlight of your career so far?

Sounds a bit clichéd but - there have been so many! Most recently I really enjoyed acting for the members (partners to you and me) of a limited liability partnership on its sale to a large French corporate purchaser. There is no text book on that sort of deal; the client dynamics were fascinating - getting all of the 30 partners to come to the table at the same time and properly advised made herding kittens look like a teddy bears' picnic! (I love my mixed metaphors). The deal also involved rewriting the membership deeds to deal with the position of the former members post completion. A whole separate set of legal issues and solutions which had to be provided simultaneously with the main deal!

Most challenging job you've ever done?

Again there have been so many, including the corporate lawyer's obligatory 42 hour completion meeting (followed immediately by a game of squash!) and the deal completion on the stroke of New Year's Eve. But one crazy week will always stick in my mind. Only shortly after my dad passed away, I flew to Chicago for a 24-hour negotiating meeting on a difficult financing deal, turned straight round to get back to the firm's Christmas party on the Saturday night and the next day flew east to Korea for a week's hard negotiating on a joint venture (tempered by our Korean host's relentless hospitality), flying back for an overnight's stop in Hong Kong before getting back to the day job! I was younger in those days!

What about outside the UK?

I think I've already given a fair flavour of our international clientele and reach. My focus on M & A activity in the healthcare sector has meant I am doing a lot of work for North American pharma and healthcare corporations in particular.

What's your definition of going the extra mile... and when have you done it?

Going that extra mile for the client is what I regard as my day job. Be it working long hours, worrying away at issues the clients don't even know they have, finding a commercial solution, encouraging my team to put themselves at all times in the client's shoes. Once this meant I had to rather dramatically close down a meeting and walk out (with clients in tow) when I realised before the client did that the negotiations were leading the client down a rather dangerous blind alley. Sometimes you have to be a bit of a thespian to serve the client's interests best!

Seriously though this is the value of experience. At this point in my career I have experienced literally several hundred private equity, corporate financing, company and business acquisitions and sales. And that means experiencing literally thousands of issues. Legal issues; tax issues; accounting; pensions; contractual; insolvency; commercial; personality and ego issues; you name any issue in a corporate deal! Thousands of smart and not-so-smart negotiating stances. Hundreds of solutions. Any client, whether an owner-manager or a corporate finance executive in one of the firm's most acquisitive corporate clients, will experience no more than a handful of these issues in their entire career.That's how we add value in Wragge & Co's corporate group - by combining great lawyering with the benefit of all those experiences.

Best example of a creative legal solution?

Legal structuring solutions is what we do. A recent example was suggesting the restructuring of a company acquisition involving deferred consideration into a long term R & D contract with the target company combined with an equity investment in it. The clients achieved the same commercial result (ownership of newly developed IP, a sharing of profits and management control of the target) without the difficulties which in that case would have arisen with 100% ownership.

When have you ever given a client a real competitive edge?

Part of my role, particularly given my experience, is to try to spot that competitive advantage for the client. More often than not I will be able to compare the client's position with one I've seen before; or maybe I will have had experience of dealing with my client's counterparty or know the advisers to the counterparty; or I'll know a leading light in the client's industry and be able to effect an introduction. I'm always pulling favours from influential industry leaders whom I know (some are clients, some aren't) to help out my existing clients in one way or another!

What's your single greatest contribution to Wragge & Co's corporate responsibility?

Well there are a few I guess. From 10 days trekking in Nepal for the firm's adopted charity to running three marathons (London, New York and Paris) for the same. I have also worked with the NSPCC over the years bringing the firm's network of lawyers and contacts to bear on the great work of the NSPCC. The firm is great on corporate responsibility, and diversity for that matter, and its very easy therefore to make a contribution.

What's been written or said about you that you're most proud of?

A lot of clients have said a lot of nice things. For example this from a director of a leading private equity house on a deal I led:

"We were very pleased with the high standard of service and professionalism which the Wragge & Co team was able to deliver in what was a somewhat complex transaction on a tight timescale. Wragge & Co has proved that it is able to deliver a full complement of acquisition, finance and private equity skills, which, for the mid-market in terms of deal size, is comparable to that offered by the so-called magic circle firms. We look forward to working with Wragge & Co again in the near future."

But my current favourite quote on me is actually from one of my team this year:

"Maurice is great fun to work with and has a natural easy way with clients....he likes to roll up his sleeves and get stuck in to a deal. Maurice is hugely supportive and encouraging and extremely commercially astute, often coming at a problem from a different angle to provide the client with the right solution."