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Finance Team of the Year

Winners of this award will operate at the cutting edge of the finance industry. We will consider one standout example of work taken from a wide range of disciplines, including bank lending, acquisition finance, structured finance, project finance and debt capital markets.

Previous Winners / Nominees

Winner

Davis Polk & Wardwell

Nick Benham

Assisting Comcast on the financing for its £30.6bn acquisition of Sky, involving a £16bn bridge facility, a new £7bn term loan, and an amendment to its $7bn revolving facility. The deal was made more complex given the publicity surrounding the competitive auction process required for its takeover battle with 21st Century Fox.

Nominee

Latham & Watkins HIGHLY COMMENDED

Sanjev Warna-kula-suriya

Representing Clifford Capital as the sponsor, manager and subordinated note investor of the first infrastructure project finance securitisation in Asia. Such securitisations are rare, and this new asset class allows institutional investors access to infrastructure debt in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

Nominee

Bracewell

Jason Fox

Advising Neptune Energy Group Holdings, the Carlyle Energy Fund and CVC Capital Partners on the reserve-based financing for the acquisition of ENGIE E&P International for $4.7bn, in what was the largest-ever EMEA private equity-backed upstream acquisition.

Nominee

Simmons & Simmons

Piers Summerfield

Acting for UBS and the other joint bookrunners on the highly complex and innovative $500m convertible bond issue by Swiss Re, which was secured over an equivalent series of bonds issued to an SPV. This included hedging arrangements with certain financial institutions to offset its share delivery obligations under the bonds.

Nominee

Slaughter and May

Azadeh Nassiri

Advising Ørsted on the $3.5bn financing arrangements for the Hornsea 1 offshore wind farm, including the disposal of a 50% interest in the 1.2GW project to the global infrastructure fund, GIP. This is the largest single-project financing to date in the global renewable energy sector.

Nominee

White & Case

Debashis Dey, Gavin Weir

Advising Greece’s four systemic banks – Alpha Bank, Eurobank, National Bank of Greece, and Piraeus Bank – on their groundbreaking non-performing loan service agreement with the Italian credit institution doBank. The deal helped establish a servicing platform for the management of €1.8bn in loans to over 300 Greek SMEs.