Norton Rose Fulbright
Norton Rose Fulbright 'has built a strong derivatives and structured finance practice, drawing top talent away from the Magic Circle'. The firm undertakes both transactional and advisory work across a wide variety of asset classes, though it is best known for its work on repackaging transactions. Nigel Dickinson and up-and-coming partner Yusuf Battiwala are the standout practitioners. Dickinson 'occupies a league of his own in the market for complex asset repackaging, with unparalleled product and market knowledge'. He assisted JP Morgan with hedging transactions related to a static RMBS transaction backed by buy-to-let mortgage loans secured on UK properties. Battiwala recently acted for Goldman Sachs in multiple market access total return swap transactions that transactions provide counterparties with the ability to synthetically access local currency bonds in emerging market jurisdictions. Global head of financial services and regulation Jonathan Herbst, market infrastructure, derivatives and fintech specialist Hannah Mean, covered bond and structured finance partner David Shearer, and Peter Noble, who frequently acts for Canadian issuers in establishing structured securities programmes, are also central to the practice.
Legal 500 Editorial commentary
Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
‘Nigel Dickinson has built a strong derivatives and structured finance practice at NRF. I am impressed at how Nigel has developed and retained a deep bench of individuals: most of his associates have been with him for most if not all of their careers. In an increasingly talent-tight environment, this indicates the esteem in which Nigel is held in the market and what he is like to work with.'
'We like how seamlessly Nigel Dickinson's DSF team are able to leverage expertise from elsewhere in the firm when needed - e.g. we recently repackaged a complex loan for which Nigel involved an excellent banking partner: the level of teamwork was outstanding and was critical to our deal execution.’
‘Nigel Dickinson occupies a league of his own in the market for complex asset repackaging: unparalleled product and market knowledge, economically very sophisticated, and a master at running complicated and difficult transactions. Nigel is particularly available and responsive for a partner who heads up a large practice group, and this is invaluable when instructing NRF on complex document-heavy transactions with several parties.'
Key clients
- JP Morgan
- MUFG
- Bank of America Merrill Lynch
- Bank of Ireland
- BNP Paribas
- First Abu Dhabi Bank
- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
- Natixis
- Piraeus Bank
- Prime Capital
- Citigroup
- Macquarie Bank
- Goldman Sachs International
- Standard Chartered Bank
- Morgan Stanley
Work highlights
- Advised Citigroup Global Markets Ltd (CGML) on its participation in the inaugural financing transaction with the United Nations’ Liquidity and Sustainability Facility (LSF) announced on Saturday 12 November 2022 at COP27.
- Advised a group of international banks - Citigroup, NATIXIS and Macquarie - in relation to the hedging of a complex mining project-financing transaction including (i) secured commodity hedging (pre-close) entered into with Sandfire Resources (ES), S.L., which was then novated into Minas De Aguas Tenidas S.A. ("MATSA") when the related acquisition completed and following this (ii) secured commodity, interest rate and FX hedging entered into with MATSA.
- Advising Goldman Sachs on all of its Islamic repo to maturity transactions with various GCC and Turkish counterparties. The transactions are innovative whereby the repo to maturity features are packaged within a Sharia-compliant wrapper.
Lawyers
Leading individuals
Next Generation Partners
Practice head
The lawyer(s) leading their teams.
Nigel Dickinson, Yusuf Battiwala