Nick Syson > Linklaters LLP > London, England > Lawyer Profile

Linklaters LLP
ONE SILK STREET
LONDON
EC2Y 8HQ
England

Work Department

Banking, Leveraged Finance

Position

Nick is a market-leading leveraged finance specialist. He acted on his first leveraged buyout in 1988, he set up the firm’s leveraged finance practice in 2001 with Gideon Moore and he was Co-Head of the Leveraged Finance Practice until 2016. Nick was elected by the Partners to the firm’s supervisory board for consecutive terms and he remains on the firm’s audit committee. He is also the firm’s Health and Wellbeing Partner.

Within his practice, he advises arranging banks on financial sponsor-backed leveraged finance transactions and coordinating bank and steering committees on debt restructurings. He also advises on bank/bond financings.

Nick has been involved in a number of pioneering developments in the leveraged finance sector, most recently acting for the underwriters on the financings for both the acquisition of Coty and the bid for MasMovil, being the financing transactions that reopened the European leveraged loan market post Covid19 and, prior to that, on a number of transactions that established and evolved the European cov-lite leveraged loan product. He has also acted on some of the early “Opco/Propco” financings (in which the finance is divided between operating companies and property-owning businesses), regulatory life insurance arbitrage transactions, transactions involving hedging uneven cashflows, infrastructure acquisition financings and numerous debt restructuring transactions. Nick was based in Singapore for two years where he focused on, and developed his knowledge of, regional debt restructuring.

Lawyer Rankings

London > Finance > Acquisition finance

(Hall of Fame)

Nick SysonLinklaters LLP

Leveraging expertise ‘across all product areas’ throughout the capital structure and also able to tap into lawyers in key financial global centres throughout the firm’s network of offices, Linklaters LLP is a ‘very safe pair of hands’ for clients providing and receiving financing to facilitate M&A transactions across the world. On the lender front, the firm’s longstanding roster of high-profile banking clients, as well as its popularity with sponsors as “designated counsel”, ensures that it has been picking up work as markets have thawed, despite remaining macro challenges. Nick Syson is particularly popular as designated counsel. The ‘very proactive’ Toby Grimstone has excellent insight into creditor and debtor perspectives by dint of a fairly balanced lender and corporate client roster, and regularly advises on big ticket corporate-led M&A financings, including his work for one of the largest takeovers by a UK company in 2023. Leveraged finance head Oliver Sceales is the driving force behind the firm’s private equity finance offering, regularly advising sponsors on bank and credit fund-led financing deals to facilitate cross-border M&A, including take-private mandates. Other key practitioners include Pathik Gandhi, who is adept at advising banks and credit funds lending into sponsor-backed M&A deals. Former leveraged finance co-head David Irvine joined Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Daniel Peach joined Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP.