Key team members: Lindsay Stevens and Jamie Enright

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Our boutique law team supports all legal aspects of the large corporate and institutional customer base, which includes indigenous global corporates, multinationals with operations in Ireland, state or government bodies and financial institutions. Notable work done in the past year include the following:

We advised key business stakeholders in negotiating finance documentation for the funding of the Celtic Interconnector Agreement – a strategic, sustainable infrastructure energy project improving the security of energy supply by linking the energy systems of two EU countries. Danske Bank functions as a security and global agent in the matter.

By integrating energy from renewable sources and enhancing the flexible exchange of power supply between Ireland and continental Europe, this initiative will contribute towards the European target for energy transition and climate change. Our team effectively collaborated with external counsel to ensure finance documents contained appropriate controls to mitigate commercial risk for the project sponsors, and by extension, the project bank group.

In 2014, SIRO was established to deliver a fibre broadband network offering to homes and businesses nationwide. In 2021, it sought to refinance its existing RCF and raise capital to extend its fibre network. The transaction demonstrated strong ESG characteristics arising from a robust and reliable fibre network. We advised key business stakeholders and collaborated with external legal counsel on the financing of Phase 2 of this project. Key elements included the covenant package and look-back conditions.

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

In the past year, we were faced with the challenge of navigating our business stakeholders through a rapidly changing and expanding legal and regulatory framework. This was against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which resulted in a quickly changing global environment. Consequently, emphasis was placed on providing ongoing legal support and advice to colleagues managing customer payment flow and liquidity challenges.

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities, and if so, how?

At Danske Bank, in line with our Nordic heritage, we are committed to playing a leading role in supporting the green transition to a low-carbon society. The challenge ahead is not merely working with companies that are already green. Instead, it lies in collaborating across all areas of the economy to engage with our customers and invest in companies that have the potential and commitment to support the transition to a low-carbon society. Our team now aims to support lenders making credit applications to promote alignment to LMA green and sustainability linked principles.