News | Private Equity

SJ Berwin Advises Ocado on £20 Million Refinancing

Monday 15th July 2002

SJ Berwin represented on-line grocer, Ocado, in respect of its £20 million re-financing by investors John Lewis and UBS Warburg.

Ocado is a dedicated on-line grocery retailer and home delivery company. The venture is 40 per cent owned by the John Lewis Partnership and has exclusive rights to use the Waitrose brand and Waitrose's own label products, purchasing power and supply chain.
Ocado will shortly be moving to a purpose built, automated, single pick, warehouse facility from where it will cover London and the South East. The funds will be put towards rolling out its service to other parts of London and the rest of the UK.

The SJ Berwin team was led by senior assistant, Richard Lever, assisted by assistant Matt Life.

John Lewis and UBS Warburg were represented by Frances Le Grys of Lovells and Richard Youle of Linklaters respectively.

Notes:

• SJ Berwin is a full-service international legal practice with more than 470 lawyers across its offices in London, Brussels, Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Madrid and Paris.
• With a dedicated European private equity team comprising over 150 full-time corporate private equity lawyers together with support from its other departments, SJ Berwin advises clients on the full-range of private equity business, both in connection with the establishment of private equity funds and their associated incentive schemes, and on MBOs, MBIs, public-to-privates and venture capital investments.
• SJ Berwin recently won "Private Equity Law Firm of the Year: Firm and funds work" at the European Venture Capital Journal Awards and "Best Law Firm (fund documentation)" at the PrivateEquityOnline Awards, and was runner up in the category of "Best Law Firm (transactions)". It has also recently been nominated for "Private International Law Firm of the Year" by Chambers Global.
• SJ Berwin won the European Venture Capital Journal Award for Private Equity Law Firm of the Year 2000, Law Firm of the Year and Property Team of the Year at The Lawyer Awards 2000, and Competition Team of the Year at the Legal Business Awards 2000.
  

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