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Our people
Katherine Watts
Profile:
Katherine is a Partner in the commercial real estate team at Maples Teesdale. Katherine has extensive experience of leisure and hotel acquisitions, disposals and lettings, shopping centre acquisitions, disposals and lettings, forward funding and development of student accommodation as well as advising corporate owners/occupiers.
Professional experience:
- Acting for Lone Star Group and Ellandi LLP on the management and subsequent sale of Grays Shopping Centre, Essex
- Advised Patrizia UK Value 2 Fund on the property aspects of its acquisition from InfraRed Capital Partners, by way of share sale, of Clayton Square Shopping Centre, Liverpool for a value of approx £38m and acting on the new lettings at the Centre
- Acting for a German fund on the management of a significant office and retail site in London EC1
- Acting for Cineworld on the acquisition and development of various cinemas throughout England and Wales
- Advising Fragrance Group on the management lettings of various hotels in Torquay, Blackpool, Manchester and Harrogate acquired by the Group
- Advised a leading global company on the relocation of its UK headquarter and advising on the disposal of redundant sites and the acquisition and development of new sites
Professional history:
- Trained and practised at Norton Rose 1987 – 1998 and qualified in 1989
- Assistant Solicitor at Lovells LLP, 1999 – 2001
- Partner at legacy firm Lovells LLP, 2001 – 2009
- Partner at Maples Teesdale LLP, 2009
Memberships:
- Federation of Corporate Real Estate Advisors (Founding Member)
- Commercial Real Estate Legal Association (Vice-Chairman)
Awards and recognition:
- ‘Katherine Watts and her team think commercially.’ Legal 500 2023
- ‘Maples are a hard working, diligent business. They are responsive, hungry for deals and are easy to work with. Their advice is always clear.’ Legal 500 2023
- ‘A very responsive and integrated firm, where the real estate teams work well together to provide a seamless performance.’ Legal 500 2023
- ‘Maples Teesdale is a specialist property firm. They have skills and experience comparable to a much larger firm’s real estate team. I have worked with Maples for ten years and have always found them to be highly professional, capable and generally good people to work with.’ Legal 500 2023
- The Maples team offer a partner-led service.’ Legal 500 2023
- ‘The team are consistently good, and maintain a strong relationship, bringing learnings from previous projects together to future work, and challenging us to look at things differently.’ Legal 500 2023
- ‘Incredibly knowledgeable about the subject matter, very responsive, pragmatic and solution oriented. They work hard to meet deadlines and explain things in a manner our business teams can understand in order to make informed decisions.’ Legal 500 2023