Smith Hamilton was founded in 2014 as a boutique firm focused on corporate and commercial law, with expertise in fund management and advising senior executives, shareholders and entrepreneurs.
In 2023, the firm became part of MEUM Group, a multidisciplinary platform supporting ultra-high-net-worth individuals, their families and their businesses. During this period, our practice broadened significantly to include family, private client, education, charities and regulatory work, employment, and dispute resolution.
The law firm is now building on that growth to operate independently once again under the Smith Hamilton name. This transition reflects a natural progression in our growth and allows us to focus fully on delivering an integrated legal service under a single specialist brand, while retaining the expanded expertise developed over recent years.
For our clients, it remains very much business as usual – the same team, the same relationships, and an even broader depth of capability.
Freya Howard is a Partner at Smith Hamilton bringing two decades of experience in commercial and corporate matters for clients ranging from individuals to financial institutions and hotel groups to technology companies.
Freya has been a trusted advisor counseling individuals and their businesses on commercial matters and managing teams of lawyers (internal and external) across multiple jurisdictions.
A keen negotiator and strategist, with a very broad legal background from having been the primary internal legal advisor to several businesses, her work has encompassed sales/acquisitions of businesses across a range of sectors from hotel groups to the technology sector, as well as regulatory and disputes work in electronic money services, payments/crypto and a very broad range of commercial contracts.
Freya particularly enjoys complex problems that require pragmatic commercial solutions to legal challenges facing commercial practices and/or issues with competitors/regulators.
Freya is known for her pragmatic, commercial approach and ability to strategically approach issues without precedent and/or where the legislation may not have kept pace with technological innovation and/or commercial practices.
In a voluntary capacity Freya is passionate about the environment (in particular regenerative agriculture/soil health and reducing waste, plastic use and returning the oceans to better health: having participated in an Economist round table on the subject) and early years education having volunteered in many schools.
Work undertaken includes:
- Corporate & M&A (Financial Services, Technology inc AI and Payments, Hotels, retail and travel)
- IPOs inc of a technology company with presence in 15 markets.
- Reviewed potential acquisition targets and conducted negotiations for acquisitions of technology companies and hotel & real estate companies from 30million-450 million
- Advisory work in the payments space, both for blue chip L2 cryptos and in the non crypto/fiat space including Payment Service Regulations (PSRs) and EU’s Payment services Directive (PSD2)
- Conducted negotiations for clients with regulatory bodies
Clients have included: HSBC, Schroders, Starbucks, Fintechs and Martechs and Crypto/Payment companies.
