The new dawn of professional services
We have reimagined
the advisory firm.
The decisions that matter most rarely fall within a single profession: a deal raises legal questions, legal advice reshapes the strategy, and strategic decisions influence financing. Yet clients are still expected to retain separate firms and reconcile competing advice - slower, costlier, and rarely seamless and complete. Novara was built to close that gap, bringing investment banking, corporate law and strategy into one senior partnership, engaged individually or as an integrated team and always accelerated by AI.
London · Singapore · Tokyo · New York
What We Do
Three lines of advice. One firm.
Most clients engage us for a single mandate : a transaction, a legal question, a strategic decision. Each practice stands on its own, under the leadership of a senior partner. Together, they advise across the full life cycle of that engagement.
Novara Ignosi
Investment Banking
M&A and joint ventures
Growth equity & complex fundraisings
Securities & public offerings
Cross‑border structuring & SPVs
Capital sourcing & allocation
Co‑investments & strategic partnerships
Novara Ignosi’s services are not available to US persons. See Important Notice.
Novara Law
Legal Services
Corporate & entity structuring
Cross‑border M&A and JVs
Capital markets & securities
IP development & licensing
Regulatory, privacy & data
Counsel‑as‑a‑Service
Novara Strategy
Strategy Advisory
Market entry & competitive strategy
Business‑ & operating‑model design
Revenue & margin optimisation
IP strategy & monetisation
Capital allocation & value creation
Post‑merger integration
Novara Global Capital, a regulated Singapore vehicle for co-investment, sits within this line.
Track Record
A record across the major markets.
The senior team assembled at Novara brings a combined record across some of the most demanding cross-border transactions of the past two decades. Specific transaction experience is shared on a client-by-client basis.
USD 100bn+
Legal transactions advised
Landmark M&A, take‑privates, IPOs and complex cross‑border transactions across every major jurisdiction.
USD 30bn+
Investment‑banking value
From unicorn fundraisings and cross‑border acquisitions to complex PMI strategies across APAC, the US and Europe.
USD 2bn+
Revenues built & exited
Businesses co‑founded, scaled and exited, delivering 8x+ cash‑on‑cash returns and 25+ years of operating experience.
Sectors we have served
A New Firm · The Idea
A firm built as a true strategic advisor
The most important decisions in business rarely arrive neatly labelled. A transaction becomes a legal challenge. A legal question becomes a strategic one. Capital, regulation, technology and execution increasingly intersect, yet most organisations still expect to seek advice from separate firms, each seeing only part of the picture.
Novara was founded on a different idea: that the law, the deal and the strategy should be considered together. We bring investment banking, legal services and strategic advisory together in a single senior partnership, allowing clients to access the discipline they need, or all three, working as one team.
We advise founders, boards, investors and institutions on the transactions, transformations and opportunities that shape the future of their businesses. Across jurisdictions, sectors and situations, our role is simple: to provide clear judgement, aligned advice and the capability to turn decisions into outcomes.
The firm is built around outcomes rather than hours. Senior counsel, delivered leanly, gives a client earlier clarity on risk, genuine cost certainty, and a relationship to rely on over years.
Marcus Wolter · Global Managing Partner & CEO
One principle governs the firm: the best outcome for the client, ahead of all else.
The Novara Principle
London
EMEA · England & Wales
Where the firm’s European and international practice is anchored.
Tokyo
North Asia · Japan
Two decades of senior counsel across Japanese and cross-border mandates.
Singapore
Asia Pacific · Global Headquarters
Home to Novara Global Capital VCC and the firm’s principal offices in Asia.
New York
Americas · New York & California
US counsel qualified across New York, California and beyond.
The Firm · The Model
Built around the client’s economics, not the firm’s.
The firm is deliberately built lean. Fixed overhead is kept low, with a small senior core complemented by a deep bench of specialist advisors engaged as each mandate requires.
For each engagement we assemble the appropriate team - the strongest local specialists, their work coordinated and their costs monitored - and consolidate it into one commercially grounded recommendation the firm stands behind. The right team for the matter is worth more than the longest list of names on the letterhead.
The effect is twofold. Senior people spend their time on judgement, negotiation and the reading of a room; and the client receives institutional-quality advice at a cost that remains competitive with houses many times our size.
Senior judgment,
senior execution.
No hand-offs. No layers. The people who win the mandate are the people who deliver it.
Outcomes, not hours.
A client pays for judgement, and for results.
One lead.
The appropriate specialists in every jurisdiction, under one accountable partner.
Aligned interests.
A lean cost base lets the firm structure fees, and take risk, alongside the client.
The Firm · The Frontier
Built for the markets
now being redrawn.
Many firms are adapting a model built for an earlier era. Novara was established in this one. The firm is at its most useful in the sectors that technology, and artificial intelligence in particular, is redrawing fastest, where value is now being created and contested.
Change on this scale is a corporate event before it is a technological one. It compels acquisitions and disposals, new structures and fresh capital, and decisions that cannot await certainty. That is the work the firm is built to lead. Six innovation clusters, in particular, sit at the front of it.
Because the firm was conceived in this period rather than adapted to it, it reads these markets as a participant rather than an observer, which is what allows it to advise on the corporate action that change demands, rather than merely to describe it.
Energy & Renewables
The next frontier
The economics of power are being rewritten, by the demand that large-scale computing places on the grid and by the efficiencies artificial intelligence brings to generation, storage and distribution. Renewables, in particular, are moving from policy ambition to investable infrastructure.
Data‑centre & compute power demand
Grid, storage & distribution economics
Renewables build‑out & project finance
Energy‑transition M&A
Life Sciences & Health
Redefinition under way
Few sectors face a deeper redefinition. Precision health and nutrition, AI-enabled therapeutics and diagnostics, and the optimisation of clinical workflow are redrawing what a life-sciences business is, and what it is worth.
Precision health & precision nutrition
AI‑driven therapeutics & diagnostics
Medical devices & connected hardware
Clinical workflow & health data
Financial Services & Digital Assets
Reshaped, again
Finance was first unsettled by decentralised finance and digital assets; it is now being reshaped, more profoundly, by artificial intelligence. The firm’s exposure is deep, across payments, digital exchanges and tokenisation, and these threads now converge on a single question.
Payments & digital exchanges
Tokenisation & real‑world assets
DeFi, crypto & market infrastructure
AI‑driven financial services
Technology & Digital Infrastructure
Reshaping every sector
Software, semiconductors, SaaS platforms and logistics technology are converging with AI to create the next generation of enterprise infrastructure. Novara advises founders, corporates and investors navigating M&A, capital raises and cross-border expansion across the full technology stack.
SaaS & enterprise software M&A
Semiconductor IP & licensing transactions
Logistics & supply-chain platform deals
Series B to IPO advisory
Consumer, Retail & Food
Brands and supply chains under pressure
Consumer goods and food & beverage businesses face a compressed cycle of disruption - from shifting demand and supply-chain restructuring to brand M&A and international market entry. Novara brings deep sector experience from global consulting and deal advisory to support growth strategy, investment evaluation and execution.
Consumer goods M&A & joint ventures
Food & beverage market entry strategy
Brand acquisition & portfolio restructuring
Growth strategy & investment evaluation
Defence & Security
A generational rebuild
Four decades of consolidation are giving way to a generational rebuild. Rearmament budgets, autonomous systems and dual-use technology are drawing private capital into a sector it long avoided, while export controls and investment screening shape every transaction.
Defence-tech & dual-use M&A
Autonomy, sensing & AI-enabled systems
Capacity, munitions & supply chains
Export controls, FDI screening & clearances
Beyond any one sector, the firm sits at the meeting point of two forces: capital - corporate, institutional and private - and the change now reordering where that capital should go. To stand at that point, with law, investment banking and strategy on one team, is the entire purpose of the firm.
We are the complex layer of professional services: high value, low volume, with a settled focus on the quality of the work and of the relationship behind it.
The Novara Position
Use the navigation arrows to explore more locations.
London
EMEA · England & Wales
Where the firm’s European and international practice is anchored.
Tokyo
North Asia · Japan
Two decades of senior counsel across Japanese and cross-border mandates.
Singapore
Asia Pacific · Global Headquarters
Home to Novara Global Capital VCC and the firm’s principal offices in Asia.
New York
THE America's
US counsel qualified across New York, California and beyond.
Offices
In the principal financial and legal centres.
The firm is established in the principal financial and legal centres, so that cross-border matters are handled by people on the ground in each jurisdiction.
London
EMEA
Novara Advisory Partners, Fora, 12 Melcombe Place, Marylebone Station, London NW1 6JJ
New York
Americas
1040 6th Ave, Ste 15B,
New York,
NY 10018
Singapore
Asia Pacific
OUE Downtown Gallery
6A Shenton Way, Level 04‑01, Singapore 068815
Tokyo
North Asia
Toranomon Hills Business Tower
1‑17‑1 Toranomon, Minato‑ku
Tokyo 105‑6415
How We Engage
The whole, or a single part.
Integration is the firm’s purpose; it is never a condition. Any one line may be engaged on its own.
Novara operates three distinct lines: Novara Ignosi (investment banking & deal advisory), Novara Law (legal services) and Novara Strategy (strategy advisory). Any one may be instructed on its own. A client may engage Novara Law while retaining its existing investment bank, or Novara Ignosi alongside its own external counsel, as it prefers, or as independence, regulation or the management of conflicts may require.
Information is held strictly on a need‑to‑know basis, at the level of the matter. By default, a team within one line has no access to the information of another line, or of any team not jointly engaged on the same matter. Cross‑line access arises only where teams are formally engaged together, or where the client has asked for it. Conflicts and information‑barrier checks are made at intake and maintained for the life of the matter.
A client may retain its own bank or law firm and engage a separate Novara line in the confidence that its information remains within the matter, and that each line’s advice is given independently.
The principle of separability
There is no requirement to take the others. How much of the firm to engage is, always, the client’s choice.
Engaged at the client's discretion
01
Senior people on every matter
The partner who wins the mandate is the partner who runs it. A client works with experienced lawyers and advisers throughout - the people who have done this before - from the first conversation to completion.
02
The right team, assembled for the matter
For each matter we bring the appropriate specialists, in the relevant jurisdictions, into our own team under a single lead: the depth of a global firm, across more than sixty jurisdictions, drawn together for one mandate.
03
Fees aligned to the outcome
Fixed, capped, collared, success-based or equity: fees are structured to share the risk and to be rewarded on success, so a client knows where it stands from the outset.
04
Capital alongside counsel
Through Novara Global Capital, a regulated Singapore vehicle within the strategy line, the firm can invest or syndicate capital where its conviction is highest, placing its own resources behind its advice.
05
Risk understood, and priced
We set out risk in plain commercial terms a board can act upon: what it means, what it is worth, and how it is best addressed, with a senior partner behind every conclusion.
Confidentiality & Independence
Enforced, not merely stated.
The separation between the lines is built into the firm’s systems and its governance. Engaging one line does not expose a client’s information across the group.
The separation is enforced in the firm’s systems, not merely written into policy.
The information barriers, and the clearance of any cross‑line access, are administered by central functions at the holding level, independent of the matter teams, under the firm’s adopted Information Barrier Policy.
The effect is plain: a client retains control of who sees what; it may keep its own bank or law firm without exposing information across the group; and each line’s advice reaches it independently of the others.
Permissioned at matter level.
A workspace is visible only to its assigned team, and invisible to those outside that permission.
Administered independently.
Barriers and any cross‑line clearance sit with central functions at the holding level, apart from the matter teams.
Checked at intake.
Conflicts and information‑barrier checks are run on engagement and maintained for the life of the matter.
Demonstrable, not declared.
All access is logged. The client portal shows the same discipline - matter‑level workspaces, every access recorded.
Novara Law
The depth within the law.
Three lines on one team is the breadth. This is the depth: the legal practice within Novara Law, across intellectual property, corporate and capital markets, with mergers and acquisitions at its centre.
Novara Law · in What We Do →
Intellectual Property
Create · protect · monetise
The rights that, increasingly, are the business itself. We develop and protect intellectual property, and put it to work in transactions.
Patents, trademarks, copyright, designs & trade secrets
Licensing, technology transfer & commercialisation
IP due diligence in transactions
Data, software & AI‑related rights
Monetisation & enforcement strategy
Corporate
Structure · govern · operate
The legal architecture a company runs on, from formation to the boardroom, and the contracts in between.
Entity formation, group structuring & reorganisations
Governance & board advisory
Shareholder arrangements
Fund formation & LP onboarding
Commercial contracts & Counsel‑as‑a‑Service
Regulatory, data & privacy
Capital Markets
Raise · list · comply
Access to public and private capital, and the disclosure discipline that comes with it, including its digital successors.
Equity - IPOs, take‑privates, secondary offerings, rights issues & placements
Debt - bonds, notes & private placements
Listing rules, prospectus & continuing disclosure
Securities regulation & compliance
Digital securities & tokenised offerings
The spine of the practice
Mergers & Acquisitions
We lead acquisitions, disposals and combinations from beginning to end, across borders, structures and situations, and stand behind the result.
Transaction types
Public M&A - takeovers, take‑privates, tender & exchange offers, schemes of arrangement
Private M&A - share & asset deals, auctions & bilateral processes
Joint ventures, alliances & consortium bids
SPAC & de‑SPAC transactions
Structures & situations
Cross‑border & multi‑jurisdictional structuring
Carve‑outs, divestitures & spin‑offs
Roll‑ups, bolt‑ons & buy‑and‑build programmes
Leveraged & management buyouts (LBO · MBO · MBI)
Minority investments, strategic stakes & PIPEs
Distressed & special‑situations M&A
Execution & beyond
Due diligence
SPA / SHA negotiation, warranties & indemnities (incl. W&I insurance)
Earn‑outs & completion adjustments
Merger control & foreign‑investment clearances (CFIUS & equivalents)
Post‑merger integration
Two threads run beyond the deal: merger control and foreign-investment clearances draw on the senior-adviser bench, and post-merger integration passes to the strategy line.
The Partnership
Senior people, accountable for the work.
Novara is a partnership in the original sense. The people who advise you have built and sold businesses, led landmark transactions and counselled boards; they put their own judgement and name behind the work.
Global Managing Partner & CEO
Marcus Wolter
London · Tokyo · New York
Educated at Humboldt University Berlin and Harvard Law School. Spent over a decade at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Munich and Tokyo, advising on landmark cross‑border transactions including Microsoft/Nokia, SoftBank/ARM and Starbucks' USD 1.3bn East China joint venture. Rated "Always Accessible" by Legal 500.
Partner & Head of Investment Banking
Takashi Toyokawa
Tokyo & Singapore · Asia
Educated at UC Berkeley. 20+ years across M&A execution, corporate strategy and digital finance spanning Asia Pacific and the US, with senior roles at PwC, SoftBank's LY Corporation, the Financial Times Group and OPN Holdings. Fluent in English and Japanese.
Partner & Head of Strategy Advisory
Robert Meyer
Singapore · London
Educated at the European Business School Germany. 25+ years building and scaling multi‑jurisdictional businesses. Co‑founder of Halcyon Agri (SGX IPO, USD 2bn+ revenues), MAS‑licensed fund manager and architect of the Novara Global Capital VCC.
These three lead a larger team. Across four offices the firm runs a full-time team of partners, counsel, associates and analysts, spanning more than sixty jurisdictions and ten languages, augmented for each mandate by the senior advisers it brings to the fore.
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Andrew Bochner
Senior Partner (associated)
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Katya Pimonova
Technology Partner
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Matt Shatzkes
Partner (associated)
Rob Cant
Technology Partner
To be announced
Office Managing Partner
Press & Insights
News, deals
and thought leadership.
Commentary, deal announcements and thought leadership from the Novara team.
In Their Words
What our clients say.
From fundraising to business development and execution, Novara has been our trusted partner at every stage.
Catharine Dockery
Founder & General Partner, Vice Ventures
There could not be a better platform for corporate growth, strategy and execution.
Stefan Atanasov
Head of Corporate Development, Nexo
Pragmatic and commercially focused, exactly what complex cross‑border transactions demand.
Dr. Matthias Abendroth
Head of Corporate & Commercial Law, Eppendorf
Everything you need to execute complex, cross‑border deals, in one place.
Kumar Ankit
Senior Vice President, Paytm
Deep expertise in IP strategy and an investor network that proved invaluable to our growth.
Martin Steinbauer
Co‑Founder, SKYX Group
Deep vertical expertise, paired with next‑generation tools to drive real impact.
Takayoshi Ito
Director of Global Business, SB Payment Service (SoftBank)
Invaluable guidance on acquisitions and fund creation across multiple jurisdictions.
Akinori Susaki
BD & Corporate Strategy, Japan Tobacco Inc.
Client Portal · Coming Soon
Your mandate, in one
secure place.
Every active engagement will have a dedicated workspace: documents, communications, and a live status record, accessible from anywhere. All access is logged and matter-level workspaces recorded.
Secure document sharing and version control
Real-time workstream and cost tracking
Two-factor authentication on all accounts
Register Interest
The portal is currently available to active Novara clients by invitation. Register your interest and a partner will be in touch.