A British law firm has worked alongside the president of one of the largest video game companies in the world to help secure the purchase of a super yacht business for billionaire game developer Gabe Newell.
A team of legal experts from Wilkin Chapman Rollits, the largest law firm in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, were entrusted with handling the UK legalities of the transaction for Mr Newell to take an ownership stake in Dutch yacht manufacturing business Oceanco.
Gabe Newell is one of the most influential names in modern technology, thanks to his work as president and co-founder of the video game development company Valve Corporation.
Valve is the company behind the international software distribution platform Steam, which is used by over one billion registered players all over the world. The company also developed iconic video game franchises such as Left 4 Dead, Portal, Half-Life and Counter-Strike.
Mr. Newell is recognised as the wealthiest individual in the video game industry, with Forbes estimating his net worth to be around $11 billion in 2025. Having ventured into the marine research industry, he is now looking at yacht building with Oceanco to further pursue his passion for ocean exploration.
Oceanco is a world-leading custom manufacturer of 80-metre-plus super yachts that has been running since 1987, creating dozens of bespoke designs that reach up to 127m in length and costing tens of millions of pounds to buy. The company is a regular at internationally recognised yacht shows across the globe, from Monaco and Palm Springs to Qatar and Fort Lauderdale.
With the assistance of a team of legal experts at Wilkin Chapman Rollits, including corporate and tax solicitor Nasim Sharf, corporate and commercial partner Sarah Kemp, employment law expert Ed Heppel and employment solicitor Lucy Trynka, Gabe Newell is now the majority shareholder at Oceanco as he seeks to take the custom yacht builders into the future – mirroring the trajectory of his stratospheric career in video game technology.
Nasim Sharf, leading corporate law expert and partner at Wilkin Chapman Rollits, said: “Working with clients of this magnitude doesn’t happen every day, so it was an honour to be trusted with handling such a high-profile acquisition by such a high-profile person. We would like to extend our thanks to Jan-Paul van der Hoek and his team at 9Corporate, a specialist mergers and acquisitions law firm based in Rotterdam, who led this international transaction and chose Wilkin Chapman Rollits to manage the UK’s legal elements of this deal.”
Gabe Newell’s esteemed career in technology began when he dropped out of Harvard University to join Microsoft in the early 1980s. He is credited with being part of the team that created the very first Windows operating system, before leaving the company to form Valve Corporation and kickstart a long and prosperous career developing and publishing video games.
He was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship award by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2013, a lifetime prize in recognition of “outstanding achievement in the art forms of the moving image”, and was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) Hall of Fame in the same year; thanks to the crucial role he has played in shaping the modern video game industry.
Now, with the help of Wilkin Chapman Rollits, he looks ahead to his new career venture of super yacht development.
Wilkin Chapman Rollits offers a wide range of business, private client and insolvency legal services across the United Kingdom and beyond.
Images provided by www.wilkinchapmanrollits.co.uk
