Excello Law acts for Baltic Creative CIC in Baltic Triangle commercial property purchase
October 10, 2017
Heather Summers
Partner in Business & Corporate, Charities & Social Enterprise
and Commercial Property (Real Estate)
Specialist in Business & Corporate Charities & Social Enterprise Commercial Contracts and Commercial Property
Heather founded and was one of the business owners of a firm of lawyers in Liverpool from 1998 to 2013, which combined her legal advisory role with that of business management. She empathises with the daily challenges faced by business owners, having resolved many similar situations throughout her period as managing partner of the practice. Heather’s approach is friendly, no nonsense professional, with a knack of cutting to the chase and getting the job done.
Alongside her work in the corporate and commercial law sector, Heather has experience of all aspects of commercial property from when she started practising as a solicitor in the late 1980’s through to the mid 1990’s working for a large Liverpool City Centre practise.
Heather has also acted for many charitable organisations on a local and national level during her career, dealing with every aspect of charities from start up to wind up, merger to disposal of assets, trading, investment and grant funding. She has lead on a number of occasions, on major capital projects involving all aspects of her disciplines.
Experience
As a board member of Merseyside Building Preservation Trust, Heather was one of the team that started a project for the refurbishment of a Grade II listed major landmark building In Liverpool 8, when the feasibility process ended and grant funding was made for project administrator a new company was formed to take over the project and to regenerate in the area who instructed Heather on all aspects of the legal work, Heather co-ordinated the property acquisition, funding agreements with the construction expertise of a colleague and complex VAT advice and saw the project through from board discussion to completion. She still advises now on commercial contracts, lettings and procuring employment advice.
Heather has done a number of corporate transactions with USA sellers or buyers, all of which involved agreements which focused on indemnity, as the American way of handling risk. Managing expectations for both buyer and seller as where we would get to with the documents and finding an agreed way forward was crucial at the outset.
Any management buy out is special. Heather likens it to a form of reincarnation for the business and being there at that moment when the reins are handed over is witnessing a histrocia step for that business. Heather once did a small management buy out in the North West – “what made this different is that there were quite a few “managers” and not only did I have to steer the corporate transaction but be hands on with the MBO team about what they should be doing in terms of their own roles, shares and directorships. They were new to the concept of shareholders agreements and articles so it was a blank canvas but at the same time meeting financial and personal expectations”. Heather worked together with them to nail the main issues in an agreement that worked for them.
Heather’s most exciting projects have been not the legal side but the acting for a local biennial contemporary arts charity with their agreements for Gormley’s “Another Place,” Ai Weiwei (designer of the Olympic “birds nest” in Beijing) spider’s web light installation over Exchange Flags and the traffic stopping “Turning the Place Inside Out”. She says, “I may have no artistic talent but I loved feeling a part of it. I used all my disciplines of charity law, commercial contracts and property knowledge too”.
Heather’s updates