Mills & Reeve advises on groundbreaking university merger to create health powerhouse

The Mills & Reeve team was led by Cambridge-based corporate partner Poppy Short alongside a multi-disciplinary team of education specialists drawn from across corporate, commercial, employment, real estate, regulatory, charity, pensions, competition, and finance.

The strategic move to create City St George’s, University of London’ – subject to approvals – will unite the universities’ key strengths and create a ‘health powerhouse’ for students, researchers and the NHS. The combined university will become one of the largest suppliers of the health workforce in London.

Following exchange of legal contracts and subject to regulatory approvals the new City St George’s, University of London will begin operating on August 1.

In a statement the universities said that by combining the reputation of St George’s as a world-leading specialist health university with City’s excellence in a breadth of disciplines including health, business, law, creativity, communications, science and technology, the merger creates opportunities to generate significant change in the world of healthcare. This includes changes to treatment, population health monitoring, workforce development and leadership, policy, and advocacy.

The merger is the largest and most complex transaction of its kind in the higher education sector for more than 20 years. It demonstrates how institutions come together to forge a wider offering to students.

Poppy Short said: “This a significant milestone for St George’s and City. It creates a powerful partnership in the higher education sphere and will offer significant opportunities for students and researchers in London to develop opportunities in healthcare.

“We were delighted to advise St George’s on this highly complex deal, which involved complicated regulatory, corporate, property and others matters across a wide range of laws.

“The effectiveness of our support was made possible by the Mills & Reeve education team having the ability to draw on support from expert lawyers across many legal disciplines and highlights our market leading position in the higher education sector and ability to lead our university clients through complex restructures and mergers.”