Squire Patton Boggs announces the appointment of Carlos Blanco Morillo as partner in the Corporate practice in Madrid. A leading private equity lawyer, Mr. Blanco joins from Roca Junyent, where he led the Corporate and M&A department of the Madrid office and was previously office managing partner. Mr. Blanco arrives with three associates.
Partner Paul Mann, European head of Private Equity at Squire Patton Boggs, said, “Carlos is a recognized private equity specialist with 15 years’ experience at the highest levels of Spanish domestic and international corporate transactions. He is the latest addition to our ongoing strategic expansion across Europe, joining just two weeks after we announced the launch of a Dublin office with PE and corporate partner Dennis Agnew and a month after Sascha Konwalski arrived in Frankfurt. Carlos joins a team in Madrid that is firing on all cylinders and, together with our expanded platform in Europe, creating all kinds of business opportunities for our PE clients in Europe.” Madrid office managing partner Teresa Zueco added: “Fantastic to have Carlos and his team with us in Madrid. He is an outstanding M&A lawyer and a leading dealmaker in the Spanish market, whom we know very well. He will be an invaluable resource as we continue to serve increasing client demand for cross-border PE transactions and other M&A as well as Spanish inbound investment.”
Commenting on his appointment, Mr. Blanco said: “The opportunity to join Teresa, Paul and the group was irresistible. Squire Patton Boggs has shaken up the legal landscape in Spain and is now the emerging powerhouse for mid-market private equity and M&A in the region and across Europe. I look forward to being part of the team that takes it to the next level.”
Mr. Blanco focuses on M&A, private equity and venture capital in the Spanish mid-market. He regularly advises international and domestic PE funds, corporates and also VC funds in their investments in a wide variety of sectors, with special focus on telecoms, technology and energy. He has additional expertise in the design and execution of corporate restructurings, including mergers, spinoffs, share capital increases and reductions, and commercial agreements such as joint ventures, and partnership agreements. Among recent transactions he advised H.I.G. Capital, a leading global alternative investment firm with over $45 billion of equity capital under management, on their multinational cross-border acquisition of a majority stake in Grupo Ransa, a leading third-party logistics player in Latin America; acted for Intrum on the acquisition of 80% of the share capital of Solvia Servicios Inmobiliarios, a wholly owned subsidiary of Banco Sabadell and one of the leading real estate service providers in Spain; and advised the Spanish telecommunications operator Excom Group on the acquisition of a majority stake in the group by Spanish PE firm Formentor Capital. Mr. Blanco started his career as an Analyst in the Economic Research Unit of Caja Madrid’s Presidential Cabinet in 2007. He then spent six years as an associate at Uría Menéndez where he practised in corporate law, M&A, banking law and capital markets. Between 2013 and 2016 he was a founding partner and managing partner of Blanco & Silva, a boutique law firm specializing in corporate law, M&A, banking and tax. He joined Roca Junyent in 2016 and from 2017 to 2020 was the managing partner of that firm’s Madrid office. He has a JD and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Universidad Pontificia Comillas (ICADE), and is a Member of the Madrid Bar Association.
The Squire Patton Boggs private equity group in Europe has trebled in size over the past 18 months, with appointments of new partners and associates in London, Birmingham, Paris, Milan, Madrid and Frankfurt. In October 2022, Squire Patton Boggs was recognized as ‘Law Firm of the Year – Transactions’ at the Unquote British Private Equity Awards 2022. In November 2022, the firm announced the launch of a new office in Dublin, to be led by private equity lawyer Dennis Agnew.