Proskauer Rose LLP

Corporate; Structured Credit

Konstantinos (Kos) Vavelidis is a partner in the London office of Proskauer. He advises originators, issuers, arrangers, investment managers and investors on a broad range of structured finance, derivatives, securitisation and asset-backed lending matters, with a particular focus on Collateralised Loan Obligations (CLOs). He has experience representing the majority of European arrangers and a number of U.S. arrangers and warehouse providers, as well as leading collateral managers and investors, on European and U.S. broadly syndicated, middle market and private credit CLO transactions and warehouse facilities.

His experience includes structuring CLOs and public and private securitisations to comply with a variety of regulatory requirements, including the Dodd-Frank Act and the EU and UK Securitisation Regulations. He advises on the EU and UK regulatory framework, including risk retention and transparency requirements, as they apply to European and U.S. transactions and retention financing arrangements. Kos has been at the forefront of developments in the European CLO market, including the development and negotiation of uptier priming debt provisions, ESG-related disclosure and investment language, rating agency criteria, sanctions provisions and other bespoke structural and commercial concepts.

He also has extensive experience in derivatives and repo transactions, and has acted for banks, hedge funds, private equity sponsors, corporate borrowers, sovereigns and sovereign wealth funds on a broad range of cross-border OTC and structured derivatives transactions involving currencies, rates, commodities and credit products.

Before joining Proskauer, Kos was a partner at a global US firm based in New York and previously London, and worked at other major law firms and was seconded to the structured finance team at Barclays and twice to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.

Kos is regularly quoted by publications including Bloomberg, Creditflux, Structured Credit Investor, LevFin Insights and 9fin, and has authored articles in publications including Law360. He has also spoken and moderated panels at leading structured finance conferences, including events organised by Opal, FT Live, AFME and Creditflux in London, Barcelona and New York.