Watson Farley & Williams LLP

With ‘impressive depth’ at both partner and associate level, Watson Farley & Williams LLP has the resources and expertise to provide ’tailored legal solutions’ to stakeholders on financing and leasing across the full swathe of transportation assets. Shipping is in the firm’s DNA, and acting on its own as well as drawing upon support from lawyers based in key international maritime centres, including Singapore, Hamburg and Athens, the team, under the guidance of George Macheras, is involved in many of the largest and most sophisticated cross-border financings in the market. Kavita Shah has an excellent grounding in both new money and refinancing work for banks and operators and acted alongside Macheras for various banks on the unwinding of their financings to a Russian state-owned shipping company. A ‘trusted, kind and gentle adviser’, Kate Silverstein has developed a strong grounding advising LNG operators, as well as handling conventional shipping matters. ’A fountain of knowledge on all things aviation finance’, Jim Bell has continued to grow that side of the practice, which sees instructions from an expanding roster of banks, lessors and manufacturers. The ‘exceptional’ Chris Mitchell is ’at the top of his game’ handling complex financings which use commercial and capital markets debt to facilitate the delivery of new airlines and portfolio acquisitions, inter alia. Other key practitioners include the ‘commercially astute’ Patrick Moore, whose broad palette of asset finance matters includes helicopter financings; the ’effortlessly capable’ Jane Keith; Lindsey Keeble, who still handles some maritime finance work alongside her duties as managing partner; Gary Walsh, who specialises in maritime asset finance; and the ‘very insightful’ Louise Mor, who has expertise in the rail sector. As well as the team’s fee-earning work, it also recently developed the well-received Global Aviation Resource Index, an online legal analytics tool.