Banking
Banking and finance is a global industry involving a wide variety of financial products, ranging from simple bank loans to companies to highly structured financing arrangements across multiple jurisdictions. The rise of internationalisation and the development of increasingly sophisticated financing structures mean that modern banking law and practice is becoming ever more complex. In the post-financial crisis era, banking and finance lawyers find themselves at the forefront of the evolution and recovery of the industry. As part of Sarah Greenwood’s four-year law degree, she spent a placement year as a paralegal in the real estate team at Mills & Reeve, at the end of which she applied for – and gained – a training contract. She rejoined the firm after completing her LPC in 2010. Now a senior associate, Sarah looks back at the choice between life as a solicitor versus a career at the Bar: “I’d enjoyed mooting at university and had done some mini-pupillages, so it wasn’t out of the question. However, having had the chance to be a paralegal for a year, I realised that the life of a solicitor was for me. I like the structure and routine of working as a solicitor in a law firm and understand a barrister’s career has a bit less of that. I also enjoy working as part of a team, with the high levels of client exposure and different types of work that you get as a commercial solicitor.” Real work The banking team at Mills & Reeve enjoys an excellent reputation for its expertise in real estate finance (Sarah’s specialism), corporate finance and asset-based lending, among others. “We employ a different model to most other firms, so that in real estate finance, for example, we carry out both the due diligence and the financing in team, offering a very joined-up approach to clients,” she explains. “Clients appreciate being able to speak to just one person on all aspects of a deal. It
also means that our work is extremely varied – I might be conducting due diligence on a high-value investment asset one day, going on a site visit the next, and negotiating and drafting finance documents the next.” She goes on to extol the virtues of this approach: “I enjoy helping clients, be they lenders or borrowers, to find a solution to commercial problems and to get the deal done. If we understand both the property and the finance, it makes it far easier for us to join the dots between the two and enables us to give commercial and practical advice that moves things along. Firms have to be able to set themselves apart and offer something new to clients, including acting as trusted business advisers and finding innovative ways to do things.” Sarah is one of the firm’s ‘innovation champions’, helping to drive and explore innovative ways of working and encouraging innovation throughout the firm, which she says is “a great addition to the legal work that I do”. Currently working on a cross-jurisdiction corporate acquisition of a property-owning company, Sarah explains some of the mechanics behind such a deal: “We are acting for the borrower, who is also the buyer. There are a lot of moving parts; obviously, you’re always dealing with deadlines in this job, but in this instance they are very specific and set in stone. I have to keep on top of these and make sure that all the relevant third parties are lined up to deliver on time to ensure we can secure funding and ultimately achieve completion of the acquisition for the client.” She recalls a similar deal for one of the firm’s key clients a couple of years ago: “It was a complicated corporate acquisition involving a number of different jurisdictions. As a result of a very tight timetable, everything had to be completed by midnight on a particular date just before Christmas. There was a massive flurry of activity with more lawyers involved than I could count, but we completed at
For more firms that work in this practice area, please use the “Training contract regional indexes” starting on p205.
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