Peter Deegan

Background

About Peter Deegan

I am admitted to practice as a solicitor in England and Wales. I have worked primarily as an M&A lawyer, but I have significant experience in Finance, Corporate Real Estate and Restructuring. I joined Clifford Chance in November 1983, becoming a partner in May 1987. But I left a year or so later to become an independent film producer in California. After making a feature film in the US in 1993-94, I re-joined Clifford Chance in Moscow in 1995 and then worked in several other European offices, becoming a partner again in 2002. I retired from Clifford Chance in 2010. From 2010 to 2013, I took time out to research and write a book, Snafu: Perspectives on the Accelerated Age (published in 2018). Then, from 2013 to 2021, I worked as a consultant for Dentons Europe (variously in Poland, Turkey, China and Spain). The breadth of my experience is unusual and stems largely from my migratory tendencies. Outside of London, lawyers in international law firms need to be adaptable. From the ‘Big Bang’ of the 1980s in London, through the privatization and inward investment boom in Post-Soviet Central and Eastern Europe, to the growth spurts of Turkey and China, I have worked as a transactional lawyer alongside lawyers from numerous countries. Mostly I have been badged as Corporate, sometimes as Finance and other times as Corporate Real Estate. But it was mainly Restructuring that propelled me to partnership at Clifford Chance the first time. And it was versatility that got me there the second time and then sustained me when I joined Dentons. I have lived and worked in Australia, England, United States, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Between 2015 and 2018, I spent considerable time in China. Currently, I live in London.