Anna Colley

Anna Colley helps clients to manage the real estate aspects of wider transactions and projects by combining expert knowledge of the property sector with sharp commercial awareness.

Anna is part of a specialist team that deals with transactional property work, often to tight timescales, involved with everything from the real estate aspects of corporate projects to ongoing asset management for clients where property is only one aspect of their business. She has particular expertise in the property aspects of mergers, acquisitions and disposals, and recognises that her clients need specialist, practical and jargon-free advice to enable seamless transactions, allowing them to concentrate on their wider commercial goals.

Anna's immersion in the transactional side of property day-in and day-out means she is ideally placed to spot potential issues before they arise, ensuring nothing will complicate a project's completion further down the line.

Anna also has extensive experience in managing stand-alone property processes, particularly those that involve the transfer or management of assets. Her other work includes working closely with housing association acquisition and treasury teams on property matters (including due diligence) relating to bond issues, security trust deeds, asset acquisitions, groupings and transfers of engagements.

She finds forming a relationship with clients and tackling through issues together to achieve a common goal both enjoyable and rewarding, especially on deals involving lots of people. Having worked with a variety of client teams, she is able to quickly form relationships – something at the heart of a successful project.

Clients

Anna's clients include Sanctuary Housing, Triple Point Social Housing REIT, Halfords, Entain (previously Ladbrokes Coral).

Highlights

Working on the one of our largest social housing client's acquisition of a struggling competitor was a big deal for them – and for us. Without the successful completion of this deal, the entire sector would have suffered, with a downgrading of the sector's credit rating. Anna team played a key role in steering this deal to a successful outcome, which made this project extremely rewarding.

The deal was complex due to the large number of entities within the struggling provider, all with significant property portfolios, and due to the fact the target group was already in financial distress. This deal therefore required careful negotiation, made more difficult by a very tight timetable of only nine weeks.

Clients

A wide range of clients including large corporates, public and private bodies, social housing providers, insurance providers, private equity specialists and any other entities that are completing transactional work with a property aspect.