Burges Salmon—five appointments

Burges Salmon has announced the appointment of five new partners, across teams including real estate, planning, dispute resolution, projects and corporate.

This year’s round of partner promotions emphasise Burges Salmon’s ambitious strategy for growth across a number of key areas including Real Estate, Planning & Compulsory Purchase, Dispute Resolution, Renewable Energy & Net Zero, and Corporate Finance & Technology.

Reinforcing Burges Salmon’s continued drive to deliver an exceptional service to its clients, the firm’s 2023 partner promotions include:

Claire MacLean: Real Estate

Claire was one of the original team members who joined Burges Salmon when the firm launched in Edinburgh in 2019.  Claire has over 16 years’ experience delivering real estate legal services. She has a particular emphasis on projects within the energy sector acting for developers, investors and funders and in the built environment sector specialising in cross border portfolio transactions, hotels, industrial & logistics and offices. Through the work that Claire does for clients in these key sectors, she works closely with the firm's Planning, Construction, Projects and Banking teams.

Alex Minhinick: Planning and Compulsory Purchase

Alex trained and qualified with Burges Salmon in 2010.  Acting on a wide range of projects for developers, landowners and local authority clients, Alex has particular experience in compulsory purchase compensation claims, energy, power and utilities projects, infrastructure projects, and developments relating to mines and minerals.  Alex is a Legal Associate of the Royal Town Planning Institute, a member of the Compulsory Purchase Association, and a representative for Burges Salmon at the Mineral Products Association.

Charlotte Whitaker: Dispute Resolution

Charlotte acts on large scale health and safety investigations, inquests and public inquiries, with particular expertise in advising clients at the incident response phase to multi-fatality incidents and has extensive experience in acting for clients in sensitive and high profile criminal investigations, prosecutions and inquests.  She is currently leading on two multi-fatality health and safety investigations and is a Lead Solicitor appointed to advise the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry chaired by Baroness Hallett.  Charlotte advises across a range of sectors with a particular specialism in transport and energy.

Alec Whiter: Projects

Alec trained and qualified with Burges Salmon in 2013.  A member of the firm’s Energy Projects team, Alec has wide-ranging experience of advising developers, investors, Government, funders, licensed suppliers, major energy users and contractors on all aspects of projects, regulation, commercial agreements and project finance transactions in the net zero, energy and waste sectors.

Alex Lloyd: Corporate

Alex works across all areas of corporate finance, acting for national and international, private and public companies and institutional investors.  Alex is focused on technology transactions, working on both high profile and international M&A whilst also being exposed to new businesses and technologies through his work on venture and growth capital deals.  Alex is a member of the firm’s Technology Transactions and Private Equity practice groups and is co-lead on the firm's BScale initiative aimed at high growth businesses, their investors and the wider start-up and scale-up ecosystem.

'Their promotions reflect our ongoing growth, and investment, in key sectors and practices including Real Estate, Planning, Dispute Resolution, Renewable Energy & Net Zero, and Corporate Finance & Technology.

'With strong technical and leadership skills, they will play an important role in ensuring we continue to provide exceptional client service and in supporting the ongoing success of the firm in the years to come.'