Charles Jacobs

Charlie is Linklaters Senior Partner and Chairman. He is also recognised as a leading high-end M&A partner and very much considered in the market as one of our very top M&A practitioners. He has led on many of the market’s most significant mergers and acquisitions and capital raisings. Charlie is also an expert in the global mining and metals sector and has over the last 20 years been the outstanding name in the sector.

Charlie has led on, and been a key figure in, a huge range of market-leading transactions. These include advising: 

• SABMiller on the recommended US$108bn offer from Anheuser-Busch InBev, the largest UK takeover and the third largest global M&A deal in history
• Glencore on the US$29bn merger with Xstrata, on the company’s US$7bn disposal of Las Bambas to an MMG consortium and on a US$10bn debt reduction 
• Industrial and Commercial Bank of China on the US$5.5bn acquisition of a strategic stake in South Africa’s Standard Bank Group, the largest-ever outbound foreign direct investment by a Chinese company 
• Absa Group on the US$2.1bn combination of the majority of Barclays African operations 
• Zain on the US$10.7bn sale of its African mobile phone business to Bharti 
• Gold Fields on its successful defence from Harmony’s US$8bn takeover 
• Billiton on its DLC merger with BHP
• The London listings including of Metro Bank, CMC, Glencore, African Barrick Gold, Hochschild Mining, Kazakhmys, Xstrata, Vedanta Resources, BHP Billiton, Computacenter and SABMiller

Charlie is a non-executive director and Senior Independent Director of FTSE 100 Fresnillo PLC and a non-executive director of FTSE 250 Investec plc and Investec Ltd.