Head of asset
finance: Jeremy Edwards
No. of partners
(assistants): 30 (70)
Key lessor
clients: RBS, Lloyds/HBOS, Barclays Asset Finance,
Société Générale, Calyon, HSBC Rail, Porterbrook, Commerzbank
Key lease broker
clients: N/A
Key manufacturer
clients: N/A
New clients gained in
2009: N/A
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Norton Rose’s asset finance department has seen a drop off in
new business due to the downturn, although it still has a presence
on many major deals and insolvencies and expects a return to
normality once the recession lifts.
On this point, Alistair MacRae, who does a mix
of ship, aviation and rail finance work at the firm, said: “The
current inactivity in shipping finance is relatively short term and
we expect activity to pick up again in 2010. It always has been a
cyclical business, and there will inevitably be an upturn in due
course as the world ecomonies recover from recent events.”
Around 40 percent of its work is advising on
ship deals and 30 percent in aviation finance work. Due to the dips
in these markets, ship finance billing at Norton Rose is down
significantly, according to MacRae.
Notwithstanding this, it has continued to see
decent amounts of offshore related ship finance work in Asia,
particularly Singapore, and also in the floating production storage
and offloading (FPSO) sector. Deals of this kind closed in London
in July include a $384 million financing of an FPSO for three
Japanese sponsors, in which it acted for ING Singapore, and a $650
million financing of a drillship for a consortium of sponsors
including ING, SMBC and Mizhuo.
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By GlobalDataOverall, business for the department is down
year-on-year, although figures may be slightly eschewed because the
first half of 2008 for the firm was particularly busy.
All of Norton Rose’s finance related
litigation is handled not by the asset finance department, but by a
centralised litigation department which does all of the firm’s
contentious work. While there are litigation lawyers with
specialist expertise in asset finance (Patrick Farrell for aircraft
and Neil Miller for shipping), all their income is received by the
litigation, and not the asset finance department.
Besides shipping and aircraft, Norton Rose is
also a major player in the rail finance arena. Key partners
involved in this work are Gordon Hall and Tom Johnson. MacRae did
the due diligence for a consortium of banks led by Deutsche Bank
and Lloyds TSB on their acquisition of rosco Porterbrook Leasing,
for £2 billion (€2.2 billion). Besides rolling stock lessors, the
firm also acts for the Office of the Rail Regulator.
Additionally, there is still plenty of rail
work to be gleaned from the Crossrail, Thameslink, Intercity
Express high speed programmes. More good news for the firm is that
it is still getting a decent influx of deals from French banks,
particularly Société Générale (for which the firm recently advised
on its lease financing of six Bombardier TRAXX F140s and eight
Alstom Prima 3U15 locos), Calyon (for its and SMBC’s financings of
four Boeing 777s), and for BNP Paribas and Natixis (for both on the
first ever optimised lease combined with Islamic financing for
eight Airbus A320 aircraft for Air Asia).
On the smaller asset front, which represents
around 5 percent of work for the department (while tax and lessor
M&A totals around 15 percent of its workload), it advised RBS
on a $400 million (€270 million) UK tax lease with Mizuho for
moveable asset units for use in the United States, on computer
equipment leases in Japan and a car battery production line in
France. More recently, on the M&A front, the firm advised
Commerzbank on the tax driven sale of one of its leasing companies
to Domino’s Pizza Group.
According to MacRae, since RBS pulled out of
doing a lot of big ticket leasing, the firm has received some
instructions from Lombard, which is now doing bigger ticket work in
RBS’ stead.
On the insolvency front, the firm is involved
in the Zoom and Sky Europe insolvencies, and also on the Allco and
Babcock & Brown insolvencies. In rail, it is involved in the
restructuring arrangements concerning National Express (East
Coast), and on the Brittania Bulk insolvency in the shipping
sector. Meanwhile, the firm continues to maintain a large
international network of asset finance lawyers rivalling those of
many of the magic circle firms.
