Banking & Finance

You may be a corporate borrower who has received terms that are too competitive to turn down and who has made the decision to move from its current bank. You may be a corporate lender who is looking to refinance a fast growing SME away from its current bank and into Corporate.

You may even be the finance director of a borrower company which is on that journey. In any case, we will help you agree the finance documents swiftly and without fuss. We will deal with the process and the detail whilst taking a sensible and pragmatic approach to the advice we give to you.

We are members of the Loan Market Association and we have experience of acting on LMA transactions.

We have a huge amount of in-house experience and have found this to be of particular value to our lender clients when they are considering how their deals should be transacted. When dealing with due diligence or the extent of protection that is necessary for a development transaction, we can tell you what is appropriate and what isn’t. We can also tell you what the current market practice is.

We have a particular specialism in dealing with volume property finance transactions and have processes in place to be able to handle any number of deals that come our way. Feel free to test us to see what value we can add to your lending business.

The firm established itself acting on all sides of leveraged deals and some very large ones at that, and that experience has stayed with us.  We still act on significant transactions and we remain well placed to advise borrower, lender and private equity clients on acquisition finance.

We find it particularly useful to be able to advise clients on the intercreditor deed by reference to our track record of advising different parties on the terms of that document in the past.

There is frequently an international element to our transactions. It may be that the borrower is based offshore for tax planning purposes or it may be that the business is headquartered in the UK but has subsidiary operations elsewhere.

We have extensive experience of managing foreign counsel on financing transactions and ensuring that the right level of foreign law advice is provided to our borrower and lender clients. Co-ordinating the efforts of lawyers in different parts of the world is a skill within itself and we will do that as smoothly as possible for you.

We also believe that the fact that we are not tied to a particular firm or group of firms abroad means that we are able to choose the right firm to work with on a case by case basis and according to the particular project that is in hand.

We work with a range of lenders on matters including mortgage regulation, payment services regulation, retail banking, recoveries and general commercial advice. Our clients in this field include building societies, credit unions, private and offshore banks and non-financial institutions providing credit (such as universities and franchise networks).

The following are some of the areas in which we have advised:

• the design of mortgage and savings products and drafting standard terms and conditions
• service contracts and issues around managing the outsourcing of critical functions
• due diligence and legal opinion work for lenders looking to obtain liquidity from the Bank of England
• the FCA Handbook and the regulatory perimeter
• unfair contract terms
• GDPR implementation, compliance and enforcement
• interaction with legislation, such as the Payment Services Regulations and the MCD
• debt recovery, LPA receiverships and general enforcement in the sector

Here's a snapshot of what the Banking & Finance team have been up to.