Corporate M&A Associate

Veldris shifts HQ to Birmingham, embracing CEO's roots and UK Government's regional growth strategy. October 8, 2026 /Veldris Relocates Headquarters to Birmingham to Strengthen Operations - Veldris announces the relocation of its headquarters from London to Birmingham. - The move is a personal decision for CEO JB Benjamin, a Birmingham native. - DLA Piper appointed as corporate legal counsel to support Veldris's growth. - The decision aligns with the UK Government's ongoing initiative to decentralize Civil Service roles. - Veldris aims to enhance control over data and infrastructure through its innovative technology. Veldris, a sovereign technology company specializing in data, AI, and computing solutions, has officially announced its decision to relocate its headquarters from London to Birmingham. The move is not only a strategic expansion of the company's UK and international operations but also a personal milestone for CEO JB Benjamin, who hails from Birmingham. With the UK Government currently shifting Civil Service roles and decision-making outside of London, Veldris is positioning itself to fully capitalize on the burgeoning talent and entrepreneurial spirit present in the West Midlands. Since March 2020, the Government's Places for Growth initiative has successfully relocated over 3,200 Civil Service roles to the region, with nearly 1,800 based in Birmingham alone. "We are a Birmingham company, so it makes sense that we should build Veldris from Birmingham," said JB Benjamin. "I grew up here and have always believed that some of the best technology and entrepreneurial talent in Britain sits outside London. The Government is recognising that by moving people and decision-making out of Whitehall, and we are doing something similar in our own way." Veldris is committed to establishing itself in Birmingham, a city known for its engineering legacy and innovative industry. "Birmingham has a long history of engineering, industry and innovation, so it feels like the right place to build the company," Benjamin added. In conjunction with this move, Veldris has appointed global law firm DLA Piper as its corporate legal counsel. The firm, which has a significant presence in Birmingham, will provide legal guidance as Veldris develops its technology and expands its customer relationships and international operations. In a statement regarding the partnership, Benjamin expressed the importance of strong governance and accountability in the company's growth trajectory. "We talk a lot about sovereignty in technology, but sovereignty without accountability doesn't mean very much. That applies to the systems we build, the companies we work with and the way we run Veldris." The consolidation of Veldris's headquarters in Birmingham and the collaboration with DLA Piper underscore the company's dedication to laying the groundwork for a long-term, sustainably governed technology firm. As Veldris works to enhance visibility and control over sensitive infrastructures through innovations like its Midgard platform, the company is aligned with broader trends in the UK aimed at decentralizing business and government activity. Shareable URL Jeff Newmond (Finance Editor) is a highly respected journalist based in the UK. With over a decade of experience in the industry, he has established himself as a skilled storyteller with a passion for uncovering the truth. He covers Finance, Business and sometimes showbiz.

DLA Piper expands market-leading patent litigation and ITC practices with addition of Partners Robert Shaffer and Sean Trainor. DLA Piper today announced that Robert Shaffer and Sean Trainor have joined the firm as Partners in its Intellectual Property and Technology (IPT) practice in Washington, DC. Shaffer will serve as Head of the Life Sciences Patent Litigation practice and Trainor will serve as Co-Head of the US International Trade Commission (ITC) practice. Shaffer brings patent litigation capabilities to the firm's life sciences platform, positioning DLA Piper to provide pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device clients with a full suite of support from regulatory strategy and transactions through high-stakes patent disputes, trial, and appeal. The arrival of Trainor, a seasoned trial lawyer with decades of experience handling ITC investigations across a broad range of technologies, cements the firm's position as the market leader in ITC Section 337 investigations. DLA Piper offers an integrated global platform built to handle clients' most complex cross-border matters. A single product launch or technology standard can now trigger parallel proceedings in US district courts, at the ITC, and before the US Patent and Trademark Office, often alongside related actions abroad. Shaffer and Trainor have deep experience across the US forums at the center of those disputes. Their addition expands the firm's ability to serve major pharmaceutical, life sciences, medical device, technology, semiconductor, automotive, battery, and consumer electronics clients on a national and global scale. "The companies we represent need lawyers they can trust when their most valuable innovations are on the line," said Loren Brown, the firm's Global Vice Chair and Global Head of Disputes. "Rob and Sean are exactly that. Rob is one of the leading first-chair life sciences patent trial lawyers in the country, and Sean is among the most respected practitioners and trial lawyers before the ITC. By bringing Rob and Sean to the firm, our clients gain first-chair trial strength in two of the most important arenas for protecting innovation: life sciences disputes and the ITC. Recruiting the market's leading partners in the areas that matter most to our clients is an important part of our global strategy, and this is only the beginning." A nationally recognized first-chair IP trial lawyer, Shaffer has spent more than 25 years handling significant patent disputes, with a particular concentration in life sciences. He has represented leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies in dozens of major matters, including Hatch-Waxman litigation, ITC Section 337 investigations, PTAB proceedings, and complex commercial arbitrations. His background includes significant trial victories and resolutions involving some of the world's most valuable drugs, medical devices, and technologies. Trainor is a nationally recognized Section 337 trial lawyer who has handled dozens of ITC investigations, including many through trial, for clients facing disputes over some of their most important technologies. His experience spans wireless telecommunications, mobile devices and chipsets, lithium-ion batteries, data storage systems, semiconductors, and advanced medical devices. He has experience establishing and challenging the domestic industry requirement unique to ITC investigations. "DLA Piper is the preeminent full-service law firm in the ITC, and Sean is the right person to help lead that practice into its next chapter, along with Helena Kiepura in Washington, DC," said Erin Gibson, who has led DLA Piper's ITC practice for several years and now leads the firm's global IPT practice. "With Rob's first-chair trial strength in life sciences joining our existing first-chair trial strength in the ITC and federal district courts, we are building a patent litigation platform no other firm can match, backed by the reach of a truly global firm. Our clients' most valuable technologies are contested in multiple forums and markets at once. We offer them one integrated team, deep sector acumen, and a bench of elite patent trial lawyers. That combination is what makes DLA Piper the right firm for the highest-stakes disputes." With a deep bench of lawyers with advanced technical and scientific degrees in key jurisdictions worldwide, DLA Piper's Patent Litigation team has a strong track record of driving successful outcomes in complex cases by combining courtroom skill with in-depth technical knowledge and experience across the electronics, computer science, telecommunications and wireless, pharma and biotech, medical device, chemical engineering, materials, and automotive industries.

AI's biggest business opportunity may not look like AI. Three years into the AI boom, the companies drawing the most investor attention are still the ones that are easy to see. Chatbots answer questions. Agents complete tasks. The visible layer of the AI economy has driven most of the narrative. But a different kind of AI is gaining ground, and it mostly goes unnoticed. It sits inside the systems that generate invoices, move money between organizations, assess credit exposure, and capture billable time. Nobody calls it AI when it's working. They just notice that fewer bills get rejected and collections take less time. That gap between where AI gets attention and where it may actually be creating value is increasingly relevant for investors. Legal services is one place where the gap is narrowing fast, and the companies enabling it are starting to look like a serious infrastructure play. The AI that works best is the kind no one sees using. Most enterprise software still requires people to adapt to it. The more interesting shift happening now is the reverse: Intelligence is being embedded into workflows so deeply that the people inside those workflows never have to think about it. A lawyer doesn't need to know that AI reviewed an invoice against a client's billing guidelines before it went out. A finance director doesn't need to know why exceptions are down. The value shows up in the outcome, not the interface. Ahmed Shaaban, CEO of legal operations technology company Fulcrum GT, argued that this is where enterprise AI becomes economically meaningful. "We've shown the world that AI can hold a conversation," Shaaban told TheStreet in an interview. "Now let's put it to work. Connect it to how a business bills, manages risk, and gets paid, and you start opening up possibilities that weren't practical before. That's the next chapter: intelligence working inside the business, helping people do things they simply couldn't do before." The challenge is that embedding intelligence into operational processes requires the underlying data and systems to already be in reasonable shape. If billing, time capture, and matter management live in disconnected silos, adding AI exposes those gaps rather than closing them. The deeper AI goes into operational processes, the higher the stakes become when something goes wrong. Law firms are building the operational foundation first. Some of the most established law firms in the world are already several years into that foundational work. Their experiences are instructive not because they represent the finished product, but because they show how much has to come before any AI deployment can actually deliver. DLA Piper International began with process standardization and a shared services center in Warsaw. The firm established clear senior ownership over its finance function, implemented enterprise technology, and built a consistent internal team capable of carrying transformation across borders. Garry Swaine, who led the effort, said the platform went live across 30 countries on the same day. The foundation made the speed possible. Eversheds Sutherland took a similar route, consolidating around core platforms that could grow alongside the business. The firm spent 180 hours consulting directly with lawyers about the friction they experienced in daily work. That exercise surfaced a collections process requiring roughly 300 records to be updated by hand each month, a problem the firm is now exploring whether an AI agent could handle without overhauling the broader collections model. Both firms described their AI applications as areas still under development. The platforms and processes are in place. The efficiency gains from layering AI onto them are what comes next. A new ownership model is entering the picture. Alongside traditional partnerships investing through their own structures, management services organizations (MSO) are emerging as a separate path to modernized legal operations. An MSO provides shared non-legal services, including finance, technology, and administration, through a separately organized entity, while leaving the law firm itself in the hands of its lawyers. Orion Legal MSO, formed in January 2026 by Uplift Investors, offers one early example. Louisiana personal injury firm Dudley DeBosier joined as the founding partner. Uplift has said the structure is designed to deliver operational support without altering firm ownership or control. The stated investment thesis includes technology, data, and AI integration across the firms the MSO supports. Whether the MSO model outperforms a well-run partnership investing in its own shared services is not yet clear. The DLA Piper and Eversheds examples show that established firms are capable of significant operational transformation without outside capital or a separate organizational structure. The MSO model adds a path; it does not establish a superior one. What enterprise software investors are paying attention to. For investors assessing enterprise software companies, the dynamics playing out in legal services reflect a broader question about where AI creates durable commercial value. An established firm expanding internationally, a partnership improving its existing operations, and an MSO building shared infrastructure across multiple firms may all need the same underlying capabilities. Demand can come from several directions at once. Scott Mozarsky, a former president of Bloomberg Law, frames the investment question around proximity to mission-critical workflows. "From an investment perspective, simply being able to say that a product contains AI is becoming less interesting," Mozarsky told TheStreet in an interview. "The more important questions are whether the company sits inside a mission-critical workflow, whether it has access to differentiated data and context, and whether its technology is connected closely enough to the customer's operations to create measurable economic value." That framing is useful precisely because it separates the hype from the signal. A software provider's position in a critical process is a starting point, not a verdict. Investors still need to examine how deeply embedded the product actually is, what it costs to implement, whether adoption is genuinely sticky, and whether the efficiency improvements being promised translate into numbers the customer can point to. Governance cannot be added after the fact. The deeper AI goes into operational processes, the higher the stakes become when something goes wrong. A system that can change a financial record or initiate a payment needs more than a capable model. It needs reliable data, defined access controls, and a clear path for human intervention before errors compound. At Eversheds Sutherland, compliance, cybersecurity, and in-house counsel were part of the delivery team from the start. That is a practical acknowledgment that the governance layer cannot be retrofitted once AI is already embedded in a workflow. It has to be part of the design from day one. That requirement raises the bar for any software provider looking to move AI deeper into legal and financial operations. The firms that make it work will likely be the ones that treated data quality, permissioning, and auditability as engineering problems rather than policy ones. The firms that try to add controls later will find out why that order of operations matters.