Kenny Walker-Durrant

Kenny Walker-Durrant is a partner in Goodwin’s Technology and Life Sciences groups, specializing in transactions M&A, private equity and venture capital financings. Kenny advises clients on a broad range of corporate matters, with a particular focus on emerging growth companies and venture capital investors in the life sciences, healthcare, and technology sectors. Kenny advises clients through every stage of the corporate life cycle.

Kenny has been recognised as a Next Generation Partner for Venture Capital by the Legal 500 UK 2025. Kenny is commended for his ‘real talent with incredible technical skills on the tech and life sciences sectors’ and “his great market knowledge, fast and pragmatic advice and turnaround on documents”.

Kenny’s representative experience includes:

Exits

M&A Transactions

• Profile Pensions, a UK digital pension adviser, on its proposed acquisition by Moneyfarm
• Advised DJS Antibodies on its acquisition by AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV)
• ReViral Limited in respect of its agreement to be acquired by Pfizer, Inc. for up to $525 million
• Sportpursuit and its selling shareholders on the sale of a majority stake to BD-Capital
• Fixflo (aka Tactile) and its selling shareholders on the sale to Aareon AG
• Symprove and its selling shareholders on the sale of a majority stake to BD-Capital
• Enterprise Therapeutics and its selling shareholders on the demerger and subsequent sale of its TMEM16A potentiator portfolio to Roche for upfront consideration of £75 million and significant potential milestone payments (having previously advised the lead investors in the series B investment into Enterprise)
• Capital Z Partners in its acquisition of a majority stake in UK based Prestige Insurance
• Advising Springer Nature on its acquisition of the British Journal of Cancer from CRUK
• Prexton Therapeutics and its selling shareholders, including M Ventures, in its sale to global pharmaceutical company H. Lundbeck A/S for up to €905 million*
• The shareholders on the sale of Stat-Dx, a privately owned Spanish diagnostics company, to QIAGEN for $191 million (including milestones)*
• The selling shareholders in Ziarco Group in connection with the sale of the company to Novartis*
• XO1 is a UK-based company developing Ichorcumab, a novel anticoagulant to treat Thrombosis, in its sale to Janssen Pharmaceuticals*

IPO

• Advised Centessa Pharmaceuticals on its $379.5 million initial public offering on Nasdaq
• Advised Achilles Therapeutics on its $175.5 million initial public offering on Nasdaq
• Advised Bicycle Therapeutics on its $60 million initial public offering on Nasdaq

VC Transactions

Investor

• Forbion (via its new BioEconomy Fund) and FMC Ventures on their investment in the oversubscribed $14 million Series A funding round for SOLASTA Bio. Established in 2021, Glasgow-based SOLASTA Bio has developed the world's first technology platform for creating insect control agents that are nature-inspired rather than selected from a synthetic chemistry library
• Advised Captify a leading search intelligence platform, on its sale to SFW Capital Partners
• Advised one of the principal investors in its participating as part of a syndicate investing $500 million of new equity in Fidelis Holdings Limited
• Advised Forbion Growth Opportunities Fund and Sofinnova Investments as the lead investors on a Series C investment of $148 million into Gyroscope Therapeutics
• Advised Y Combinator’s Continuity growth fund as lead investor on a Series F investment of £113 million ($144 million) and its participation in a Series G investment of £60m into Monzo Bank
• Advised Jeito Capital as lead investor on a Series C investment of $92 million into Pulmocide
• Advised Andera Partners and LSP on a Series B investment of £65 million into Artios Pharma
• Advised Lakestar on a series B investment of £29 million in Eigen Technologies; a series B investment of £15.49 million in Impala; and a series A investment of £10.2 million in Yapily
• Advised LSP on a Series C investment of $28 million of Lumeon
• Advised OMERS Ventures Europe on a Series B investment of €18.5 million of FirstVet
• Advised EQT on a Series A investment of £12 million of Peanut App
• Advised Index Ventures on a Series A investment of $11.5 million of Birdie

Company

• Advising Myricx on its £90 million Series A financing, co-led by Novo Holdings and Abingworth. Myricx Bio (“Myricx”) is a UK biotech company focused on the discovery and development of a completely novel class of payloads for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), based on inhibitors of N-Myristoyltransferases (NMT) for the treatment of cancer
• Cognitive Credit on its $10 million Series B round led by ETFS Capital, with participation from existing investor, XTX Ventures. Cognitive Credit is a UK-based software development company which provides the world's leading credit investors with specialist data and analytics to form smarter, faster credit views
• Advised Centessa Pharmaceuticals on its $250 million financing round in conjunction with its acquisition of 10 biotech companies
• Advised Achilles Therapeutics, a Stevenage based biopharmaceutical company developing personalised cancer immunotherapies, on the completion of its £100 million Series B financing, which is one of the largest growth stage venture rounds for a UK biotech company in 2019 and its £52.7 million Series C financing
• Advised Quanta Dialysis Technologies on its series C funding round raising $48 million
• Advised Bicycle Therapeutics Limited on its £40 million Series B equity financing round led by Vertex* and on its $27.9 million series B2 equity financing led by Tybourne
• Advised Exscientia Limited (an AI-driven drug discovery company) on its $26 million series B equity financing round. The Investors were Celgene Corporation, GT Healthcare Capital Partners and Evotec AG
• Advised Grip on its $13 million Series A equity financing led by Kennet Partners

*Denotes experience prior to joining Goodwin.