Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton is best known for its work on complex, non-vanilla capital markets transactions, and it has extensive experience in representing financial institutions, acting both as underwriters’ counsel and for the banks as issuers. Practice head Sebastian Sperber acted for global pharmaceutical company GSK in its pre-demerger $8.75bn offering of bonds, which helped the company to prepare for the separation of the GSK consumer health care business into a standalone business. The proceeds were used to fund a dividend to the GSK Group and the Pfizer Group, which owned a major stake in the consumer health care business. Key partner David Gottlieb frequently acts for Santander UK Group Holdings plc in debt offerings under its US registered MTN programme, and recently this included a $1.5bn fixed rate/floating rate notes issue. Newly promoted partner Chrishan Raja handles debt offerings in both developed and emerging markets, and his recent work includes assisting Gottlieb with work for initial purchasers including Citigroup Global Markets on a $500m tranche of senior notes. The firm is also highly active in the sovereign debt space, with Gottlieb and Jim Ho among the key practitioners.