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BANKING & FINANCE

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BANKING & FINANCE

Our Banking and Finance department provides legal advice to lenders and borrowers alike on complex finance transactions, including, inter alia, corporate and project financing, refinancing and debt restructuring, capital markets and securities, asset and acquisition finance, real estate finance, corporate lending and loan markets, capital management and restructuring, IPOs, AIM listings, regulatory compliance and corporate governance.

The department advises domestic and international clients, including multinational Fortune 500 and listed companies, brokerage houses, investment funds, commercial banks, bank-owned leasing companies and institutional investors.

01.Highlights

    • We handled the guarantees of a €6,6 million bond loan – issued by the National Bank of Greece – of a company owning a big hotel in Crete, through the pledge and assignment of lease proceeds on behalf of TUI TRAVEL PLC GREEK SUBSIDIARY, the lessee of the hotel, responsible for paying the lease proceeds to the bank during the lease agreement.
    • We advised a UK real estate fund in its €130 million bid for the acquisition of SOCIETE GENERALE LEASING GREECE, a bid that reached the final stage of the tender process.
    • We advised INTRAKAT with respect to the financing of the construction of the Shtip hospital in Skopje, Macedonia, a €30 million project awarded to INTRAKAT, following a tender, by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Macedonia, including the issuance of a €3,5 million guarantee facility.
    • We advised RECKITT BENCKISER with respect to a three-year loan facility agreement of an aggregate principal amount of €17 million, concluded with and in favor of a limited liability company, incorporated under the laws of Spain and seated in the UK.
    • We advise US developer CLEANEARTH CAPITAL in relation to the financing of what is currently the biggest development project in Serbia, a €165 million mixed-use project in the city of Nis.
    • We advised SECURE PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT & INVESTMENT (SPDI) with respect to the assignment of a €2,5 million shareholders’ loan following the acquisition of 20% of the total equity in a Cypriot company from a Luxembourgish seller. The Cypriot target wholly owns a Bulgarian SPV, which is the owner of a prime office building in Sofia.
    • We advised BANCPOST with respect to a €25 million non performing loan to the Romanian subsidiary of an Irish real estate fund, currently under insolvency.
    • We advised MARFIN BANK in dozens of cases related to regulatory, enforcement, guarantee and insolvency matters, at times involving both Romania and Cyprus (the jurisdiction of the bank’s shareholders). Besides the need to adapt to recent changes in the Romanian legal framework with respect to banking and insolvency, our client required specialized cross border advice in view of the dramatic developments in the Cypriot Banking sector.
    • We advise BIC with respect to all banking and financial matters and we advise on all legal and practical aspects of their financial development.

    • We represent GREENLAKE DEVELOPMENT in all aspects related to the €150 million financing of –possibly– the most prestigious and certainly one of the largest current residential construction projects in the city of Bucharest, Green Lake Residences.

    • We advised a listed distributor of hotel equipment with respect to the sale of its 100% Romanian subsidiary to a Cypriot company, wholly owned by a Panamanian entity.
    • We negotiated a €25 million syndicated loan with IFC, TIRANA BANK and ALPHA BANK on behalf of TEQJA Group, in a rare financing deal for the Albanian market standards.
    • We have successfully handled to date a number of over 200 cases of claimants seeking to restructure their debts and ease the terms of their bank loans reaching a favorable in-court settlement with the respective banking institutions.
ESPA