Proskauer

Rob Newham is a senior associate in the Private Funds Group.

Rob advises fund sponsors throughout the lifecycle of their funds, including the formation of flagship funds, co-investment funds, single-investor vehicles and managed accounts; the making of investments in portfolio companies; and fund ownership and operational matters. He negotiates limited partnership agreements and side letters with institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds, Australian superannuation funds, US state plans, corporates and fund-of-funds investors.

Alongside his transactional practice, Rob has spent the last six years reshaping how fundraisings are executed, with a focus on the end-to-end lifecycle from instruction through final closing and beyond. He has collaborated with leading technology providers to redesign the most process-intensive elements of live matters around technology, embedding practical value within the legal process rather than alongside it. This work includes the electronic subscription and onboarding processes now used on the group’s fundraisings; investor-tracking environments that give sponsors real-time visibility of each investor’s status; structured records of negotiated side letter positions that allow terms to be compared across funds; and tools that consolidate investor comments, prepare most-favoured-nation elections and track post-closing reporting obligations.

Rob also advises clients on their technology strategy. He works with sponsors and their investor relations, finance and operations teams to understand how their fundraisings operate in practice, identify where time and cost are being lost, and determine where change would have the greatest impact and what each option entails. Much of that work involves cutting through market claims: understanding how technology functions in practice, where it performs well, and how it can address the specific issues a sponsor is seeking to solve. He has also advised technology providers on the design of products for the private funds market, and speaks and delivers training on these subjects to clients and colleagues across the firm’s offices.

Rob was the inaugural winner of the Proskauer Chairman’s Award for Innovation in 2021. He was shortlisted for the Innovation Trailblazer award in the Law.com Legal Innovation & Technology Awards in 2023 and 2025, and for the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Europe awards in 2023.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Rob was an associate at Linklaters in London and Webber Wentzel in Johannesburg.