Richard Fletcher > Macfarlanes LLP > London, England > Lawyer Profile

Advising across a range of a mainstream and alternative asset classes and on the full lifecycle of funds, with the use of AI, the ‘highly knowledgeable and experienced’ team at Macfarlanes LLP regularly advises on investor call bridge facilities, NAV facilities, GP support facilities, equity bridge facilities and equity commitment finance structures. The team is jointly headed up by the ‘top-notch players’ Andrew Perkins, whose focus lies in fund and leverage finance from the lender perspective and Richard Fletcher, who also leads the structured finance and securitisation practice and excels in the structuring of debt finance into a range of investment funds.

Macfarlanes LLP has ‘a very efficient team that can work to challenging timetables and always keeps clients updated on progress‘. The firm handles a broad range of work, encompassing residential and commercial mortgage, consumer loans, trade receivables and whole business deals. The firm acts for banks, alternative lenders and, increasingly, credit funds. On fund finance matters, Richard Fletcher ‘is always available to offer sound practical advice and seems to be well respected by counterparts‘. He advised Venn Partners LLP on a £100m tap issuance of bonds. Head of the finance group Andrew Perkins is a key adviser to banks, alternative lenders and credit funds. Among the senior associates, Kelly Wilson and Scottish-qualified Ryan Moore play key roles in the practice.

Macfarlanes LLP provides ‘strong technical expertise, commercially pragmatic advice, and great value for money‘. The firm has one of the most prominent buy-side practices in the London market, and its work spans prime brokerage, derivatives, repos, clearing, and debt trading. Will Sykes (who has ‘a deep and unparalleled understanding of prime brokerage and financing documentation‘) and Chris Acton (who is ‘able to cut through the technical rules to give pragmatic and commercial advice‘) lead the practice. Acton and senior counsel Rob Daniell assisted Spanish defence and technology company SAPA Placencia Holding with an equity collar confirmation entered into with ING Group in order to partially finance the acquisition of shares of Spanish IT and defence systems company Indra Sistemas .Richard Fletcher, who advises numerous financial institutions, corporates, fund managers, investors, servicers and trustees, and hedge fund adviser Christine Long also play central roles in the practice.