Karen Friebe

Practice Areas

Real Estate

Hotels, Hospitality & Leisure

Retail & Consumer

Career

Karen is a member of the Real Estate Group at Bird & Bird. She has many years' experience in real estate transactions and also lead's Bird & Bird's international Hotels, Hospitality and Leisure team, specialising in the acquisition, development and disposal of all types of hotels, from budget to luxury and in the negotiation of hotel management agreements.

Working with her skilled global team, they buy, sell and develop hotels. They also negotiate hotel franchise agreements and hotel management agreements and related documents such as IP licences and technical services agreements.

In the commercial property arena Karen represents investors, developers, landlords and tenants and has long standing expertise in the acquisition of corporate headquarters as well as the negotiation of many types of leases, including hotel leases and sale and leaseback transactions.

She is also a regular panelist at industry conferences such as the International Hotel Investment Forum.

Karen has a strong interest in ESG and works with the Energy Environment Alliance and other hotel industry stakeholders, looking at how ESG commitments might best be incorporated into operational agreements.

She is one of the founders of Real Estate Balance, which works to address the gender imbalance in the real estate sector and has over 100 corporate members. In 2022, she led the REB team that published a guide to the collection of EDI data in the workplace and in October 2023 was delighted to receive, alongside the REB co-founders, the EDI Team of the Year Award from Property Week at their Inspiring Women in Property Awards.

Personal

Studied:

UCL, LLB, Laws

Admissions:

Law Society of England & Wales in 1983