Zoe Beattie
Zoe is Head of Funds & Real Estate for Digital Legal Delivery’s UK and EMEA teams.
Based in Belfast, as Digital Legal Delivery Corporate's Head of Funds, Zoe leads a team specialising in a wide range of Investment Funds work. With more than 15 years' experience working as an investment funds lawyer both on-shore and off-shore, Zoe has expertise across private equity and hedge fund matters, including fund formation, investor advisory work and acting for fund managers on regulatory change projects.
Prior to joining Herbert Smith Freehills, Zoe gained three years offshore experience with Carey Olsen in Jersey and six years in London within the Investment Funds team at Travers Smith. Zoe has also gained in-house experience through her previous role as Legal Director for a leading global private equity and real estate fund administrator, where she had responsibility for managing provision of in-house legal services across 10 international offices and reported directly to the executive board on legal issues affecting the firm.
Zoe has been able to combine her subject matter expertise with the project management and client delivery skillset acquired working within the Digital Legal Delivery sector, to grow and lead a multi-disciplinary Funds team working for a range of market leading Asset Managers.
- Band 2 Alternative Legal Services Providers (Contract Lifecycle Management Global-wide and Law Firm LPO Global-wide), Chambers and Partners, 2021 – 2023
Background
Zoe graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Law from Queen's University, Belfast in 2003 and qualified as a Solicitor in Northern Ireland in 2005 (subsequently transferring her practising certificate to England & Wales during her time in London).
Experience & expertise
Selected matters
- Regulatory/Restructuring Repaperings: leading a number of large scale regulatory repapering projects for a global asset manager, including AIFMD, MiFID II and EMIR implementation, in addition to bespoke projects to implement internal restructurings and changes to service provider.
- IMA Reviews – overseeing a strategic review of an investment manager's key investment management agreements and reporting on key terms including those relating to AIFMD and delegation requirements, to facilitate the client's preliminary MiFID II analysis.
- Hedge Fund reviews: establishing a business as usual solution for a fund of hedge funds client (in their capacity as an investor) - conducting due diligence of key hedge fund documentation (including OMs, Articles, LPAs, IMAs and subscription documents for corporate, limited partnership and unit trust vehicles) and providing a 'red flag' report on non-market terms, based on our knowledge of their business and objectives.
- Regulatory Outreach: leading on a regulatory outreach project for a global asset manager to update their key Distribution Agreements in line with Irish regulations and attend to all communications and negotiations with their counterparties directly.