Sullivan & Worcester LLP

Amy A. Zuccarello

Amy, a member of the firm's management committee, represents borrower and creditor clients in all aspects of distressed transactions, complex bankruptcy proceedings and out-of-court restructurings. Amy’s practice includes a focus in the area of corporate trust, and she has experience representing indenture trustees, agents, collateral trustees, bondholders, lenders and investors in a wide range of complex asset-backed and unsecured financings and corporate debt restructurings, both inside and outside of Chapter 11. Amy has provided advice to clients across numerous industries, including retail, transportation, senior housing and hospital, recreation, real estate, insurance, clean and alternative energy, municipal distress, mining, military housing, financial services, medical devices and intellectual property. Equally comfortable as both a bankruptcy lawyer and a transactional lawyer, Amy has specialized experience negotiating aircraft sales and leases, public and private asset securitizations, real estate project financings and other structured transactions. Amy regularly advises secured lenders on perfection and remedial issues under the UCC and provides non-consolidation opinions, true lease opinions and true sale opinions on behalf of bankruptcy-remote, special purpose entities. Amy is also the co-chair of the firm's Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee.

Daniela Barrdear

Counsel Daniela Barrdear advises on trade, commodity and export finance structures, acting for banks and non-bank financial institutions, development finance institutions and multilateral organisations as well as borrowers. She has significant knowledge of blended finance, ECA-backed financing for both for borrowers and bank syndicates, supply chain finance techniques, across the globe with a focus on emerging markets. Daniela advises the European Union, UK Export Finance and African Export Import Bank in the design and implementation of credit risk mitigation guarantees and programmes offered to banks and other development finance institutions. Daniela joined the Sullivan &Worcester team in 2023 after spending 14 years in the trade and commodity finance team of Hogan Lovells in London.  

Ellis Lawson

Ellis Lawson has extensive experience across a wide range of finance products and geographies, having spent significant portions of his career based both in London and in the Middle East and having advised on transactions across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has regularly acted for all commercial parties to financings, including arrangers, syndicate lenders, borrowers, sponsors and export credit agencies across finance categories including syndicated corporate lending (conventional and Shari’ah compliant), acquisition finance, project finance and real estate development finance. In addition Ellis has significant experience acting on debt restructurings and in connection with financial distress. Ellis joined Sullivan & Worcester from a Magic Circle law firm in 2023 after spending 12 years working in their London, Dubai and Abu Dhabi offices.

Geoffrey Wynne

Geoffrey Wynne is head of the Trade & Export Finance Group and Sullivan's London office. He has extensive experience in banking and finance, specifically corporate and international finance, trade and structured trade and commodity finance, electronic bank and digitising trade finance, structured finance, asset and project finance, syndicated lending, equipment leasing, workouts and financing restructuring, leveraged and management buy-outs and general commercial matters. Recognised as one of the leading trade finance lawyers globally, Geoff has advised extensively many of the major trade finance banks around the world on trade and commodity transactions in virtually every emerging market including CIS, Far East, India, Africa and Latin America. He has worked on many structured trade transactions covering such diverse commodities as oil, nickel, steel, tobacco, cocoa and coffee. The team which Geoff leads has won numerous awards and recognition for its work in the Trade and Export Finance industry. In 2021 the firm was named ‘GTR Law Firm of the Year for Innovation’, recognising the role the firm played during the initial stages of the pandemic in 2020 helping to ensure the trade finance industry was able to move to a secure digital environment from a legal perspective.

Marian Boyle

Marian Boyle heads Sullivan’s UK insurance and disputes practices working closely with the firm’s established trade and export finance team, and the U.S.-based disputes team, offering advice on insurance, risk management and commercial dispute resolution. With over 20 years' experience, Marian advises banks, insurance brokers, investment funds, government agencies and corporates in relation to commercial insurance arrangements which support structured trade, commodity and pre-export financing as well as corporate finance, energy, property, M&A and outsourcing transactions. She also drafts and interprets insurance policies and advises on the use of insurance by credit institutions and investments firms as credit risk mitigation for capital adequacy purposes under the Capital Requirements Regulation. Marian’s contentious experience includes advising clients in relation to disputes arising from trade credit, professional negligence and transactional disputes. These disputes are often international in nature and result in large-scale, highly complex multi-party litigation and arbitrations.

Mark Norris

Mark's practice covers cross border inward investment, syndicated lending, structured export credit finance, structured trade and commodity finance, debt restructurings and asset finance. He has been recognised in The Legal 500 UK as "excelling" in structured export credit transactions and is praised for his "commercial and user-friendly approach." Mark advises on ESG financings including hospitals, clean energy and transportation, and advises on financial crime, modern slavery, bribery and corruption issues in connection with trade and export finance. He led Sullivan’s response to the UK Government's consultation on UK Export Finance (UKEF)'s anti-bribery and corruption policy, with many of his recommendations accepted by the UK Government. He has advised financial institutions, funds, corporate borrowers, agents and trustees, and national and supranational sovereign/quasi-sovereign organisations on award-winning finance transactions throughout Africa, Western, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the CIS and the Middle East. Mark has extensive sector experience in infrastructure financing across Africa including off-grid power, healthcare and transportation, and has lived and practised law in the Czech Republic (Prague), England (London), Germany (Düsseldorf and Frankfurt) and Russia (Moscow). Mark holds graduate and post-graduate degrees with honours from the London School of Economics.

Sam Fowler-Holmes

Sam Fowler-Holmes specialises in structured and unstructured trade, commodity and export finance, advising both financial institution and corporate clients on a range of financing products including pre-export financing, pre-payment financing, letter of credit and payment instrument facilities and working capital and borrowing base financings. He has extensive experience advising clients on a wide variety of supply-chain finance structures and has acted for electronic platform providers and platform participants. Sam regularly advises on risk distribution techniques, including funded and unfunded participations and standby letters of credit and demand guarantees, and on insurance-related issues. He has acted on matters in relation to numerous jurisdictions across mainland Europe, CIS, Africa, Asia and the Americas and in connection with a significant range of commodities including oil, gas, metals and soft commodities. Sam is a regular speaker at the Sullivan trade and export finance seminars and is a member of the International Trade and Forfaiting Association (ITFA) Emerging Leaders Committee.

Simon Cook

Simon Cook has experience in a wide variety of banking and finance transactions, including in particular in relation to structured trade finance, trade finance, project finance, invoice discounting facilities and borrowing-base facilities in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the CIS. His work in the structured trade area covers a range of pre-export and prepayment financings acting for both lenders and borrowers notably in oil, telecoms, soft commodities and metals sectors with particular experience in Africa and the Middle East. Simon has worked and travelled extensively in Africa and the Middle East, having spent over three and a half years in Dubai. He has participated in a number of structured trade finance and project finance conferences and seminars throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, including speaking at conferences on PPP in South Africa; on project finance and structured trade finance at Afrexim's annual structured finance conferences in Egypt, Ghana, Zambia and South Africa; and at structured trade finance seminars and general finance in London, Paris, Lisbon, Geneva, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, South Africa, Zambia, Uganda, Ghana, Nairobi and Dubai.