Banking and finance: transactional work

DLA Piper

DLA Piper offers a good market coverage advising banks and debt funds. The team has a strong mid to upper-mid cap corporate financing and LBO financing practice, including unitranche, bridge loans and RCF facilities. Additionally, the firm houses strong real estate expertise that covers various property assets as well as solid domestic and African project finance capabilities. The practice is headed by real estate finance expert Erwan Lacheteau and includes the talented Sophie Lok and Romain Guénin, while Eric Villateau focuses on project financing work.

Legal 500 Editorial commentary

Testimonials

Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.

‘The service is excellent.’
‘High availability and adaptability; very good understanding of business issues; highly precise legal analysis.’
‘This is a talented team that provides a level of service that is hard to improve upon.’
‘The team is particularly responsive and professional. The level of service is above market market standards’
‘Good responsiveness, understanding of issues.’
‘Sophie Lok is exceptional: very attentive, very available, very professional and able to adapt to any type of situation.’
‘Eric Villateau (partner) and Aurélie Bossert (counsel) are very attentive and available and above all solution providers. Very good negotiators.’
‘Erwan Lacheteau mainly works on domestic and international real estate financing transactions. He has excellent knowledge of the market. He combines technical expertise with great negotiation skills. Discussions always take place in a calm, constructive and respectful manner. Romain Guénin is reactive and has great negotiation skills'.

Key clients

Société Générale group
BNP Paribas
Blackstone Group International Partners LLP
The Carlyle Group
Natixis and Caisse d’Epargne and Banque Populaire (BPCE group)
Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Banking
Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations
ING Bank N.V.
Goldman Sachs
Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (Nord/LB)
Realterm
GLP (Gazeley)
Brookfield/Edyn
Fortress
Invesco
Mount Street
Pricoa / PGIM (Prudential group)
Crédit Industriel et Commercial
Oxford Properties Group

Work highlights

Advising a pool of banks of the Crédit Agricole Group in the context of the 200 million euros bridge loan to capital increase made available to Clariane for its global restructuring plan.
Advised Goldman Sachs on a €385m refinancing package granted to Olympic Lyonnais.
Advising Blackstone on the refinancing of several acquisitions of logistics assets located in France.