Overview
Freehills’ Banking & Finance group acts for banks, arrangers, underwriters, syndicates, clubs, institutional investors and corporate borrowers for all of their general financing requirements. We act on a broad range of corporate financings covering property, trade and acquisition finance (takeovers), leveraged transactions (MBOs and LBOs) and large-scale corporate lending, involving a variety of structures including:
- secured and unsecured financings
- syndicated facilities
- bilateral facilities
- bank club facilities
- negative pledge financings
- security trust and security management arrangements
- security documentation.
Our experience means that we are conversant in many different perspectives that parties may have in a transaction and are able to devise commercially sensible outcomes for our clients. Combined with our technical excellence, our experience enables us to work promptly and cost-efficiently in completing transactions.
Experience
Recent transactions on which we have advised include:
- Macquarie Group Limited restructure - Advised the bank syndicate on the $9 billion financing for Macquarie Group Limited’s new holding company created by Macquarie Bank.
- Wesfarmers acquisition of Coles - Acted for ANZ, BNP Paribas and NAB as joint lead arrangers and underwriters on the largest single corporate financing ever undertaken in the Australian loan market—the $10 billion facility provided to Wesfarmers to fund the acquisition of Coles Group.
- Orica - Acted for Orica Finance Limited on the refinancing of club facilities exceeding $2.3 billion in aggregate.
- Babcock & Brown Infrastructure (BBI) - Acting for BBI on a number of corporate facilities including a $800 million-equivalent revolving credit and a $2.8 billion three-year revolving credit.
- Acquisition of Multiplex - Acted for Barclays Capital on the $2 billion financing for the takeover of Multiplex Group by Brookfield Asset Management Inc.
- Macmahon - Acted for Macmahon on a $440 million financing package comprising a mixture of secured club facilities and an operating master lease facility with domestic and international tranches.
- Lend Lease - Advised Lend Lease on the £550 million syndicated facility arranged by Barclays Bank.
- Investa - Advised Investa Property Group on the financing of its wholesale and retail funds and on the core financing for the Investa Property Group, including US private placements, CMBS issues and domestic note issues.
Working with you
Having acted on many of Australia’s big ticket financings, we can offer clients a proven track record of providing the highest quality of legal advice.
Our experience in acting for both borrowers and lenders and our knowledge of current market practice assists us in working with you to meet your commercial objectives.
Clients
Freehills currently acts for all the major Australian banks and a number of Australian and international investment banks and other financial institutions, including ABN AMRO, Babcock & Brown, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs JBWere, HBOS Australia, Investec Bank and Macquarie Bank.
We regularly act for corporate borrowers, including Carlyle Group, ERM Power, Lend Lease and Westfield.
