Staff profile

Michael is a principal associate in the London office of the national law firm, Weightmans where he acts for owner-managed businesses, family businesses and entrepreneurs. He advises on corporate transactions including management buyouts/buy-ins, mergers, share and asset acquisitions and disposals. Michael also deals with group reorganisations and restructures, shareholders’ agreements, limited liability partnership agreements, joint ventures and provides general company law advice. 

Michael has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in law and was called to the Bar in 2002 but later qualified as a solicitor. His LLM dissertation, for which he was awarded a distinction, was entitled: “Admitting the inadmissible. Permitting prior negotiations in the interpretation of contracts”. 

Current research

Michael is researching the law and market practice surrounding the nature of corporate transactions and the inequality between buyers and sellers. He is being supervised by Chris Riley and Dr Sean Thomas. His research proposes to examine the risks and liabilities that a buyer assumes as against those assumed by the seller and to assess whether the law and market practice should assist the buyer more and offer it greater protection. He will consider the appropriateness of the buyer’s assumption of risk in these transactions and analyse whether measures need to be taken to address the imbalance of seller and buyer risk. The aim of Michael’s research is to seek whether amendment is needed to existing legal principles by way of analysis and evaluation of English and US law in order to establish legal principles and market practice that are more equally balanced between a buyer and the seller of a company, its business or assets. These will be considered against a framework dictating that default rules need to be sensitive to the contracting environment and the nature of the contractual relationship. Michael’s research will evaluate the effectiveness of law, the winners and losers created by the current law, and provide understanding of business behaviour and if contract law meets commercial expectations. 

Research Interests

• Contract law
• Corporate law
• Comparative contract law
• Comparative Corporate Law
• Contract Theory
• Philosophy of Law

Research Groups

Institute of Commercial and Corporate Law

Journal articles:

Language lesson, N.L.J. 2017, 167(7745), 17

A cosmetic war? Pre-emption rights on transfer, N.L.J. 2017, 167(7751), 12

Supervised by:

Mr Chris Riley - Primary

Dr Sean Thomas - Secondary