Commodities & Trade Finance

Specialists in Commodity Finance, Trading and Hedging



A team of highly-experienced transactional, regulatory and litigation specialists, with the ability to operate both practically and strategically towards financial objectives.

Testimonials

“This team provides a bespoke and extremely user-friendly service, which in many respects has the feel of having one’s own in-house counsel.”

The Legal 500, 2021

Summary

Commodities and Trade Finance requires specialist, experienced lawyers. Each of us has between 15 and 30 years of experience advising international financiers, traders and brokers in the physical and paper commodities markets. We help in-house counsel, traders and senior managers deliver commercial results while simultaneously managing legal risk. Many of our practitioners have worked on trading floors with front-office desks and structured finance departments.

We are highly experienced in the full range of traded commodities including oil, natural gas, electricity, coal, metals (base, ferrous, precious), agricultural products and renewables, and deal with physical, derivative and financing structures. Through our managed network of established local counsel, we work internationally and across time-zones.

Our work in Commodities and Trade Finance includes:

  • Prepayment and offtakes
  • Spot and term commodity sales
  • Structured trade and commodity finance
  • Reserve-based lending and borrowing base lending
  • Secured bilateral, club and syndicated facilities
  • Receivables financing and supply chain financing structures
  • Trade finance products and trade facilitation programmes
  • Bank-to-bank lending and other products and selling down of trade assets
  • Multi-jurisdictional collateral programs and ownership-based structures
  • OTC and on exchange hedging arrangements
  • Commodities related M&A

Notable cases

  • Advised an international commodity trader on a pre-export finance facility for the production of copper concentrates in Central Africa
  • Advised the European office of a US-based alternative trade finance lender on its facilities with UK and European borrowers
  • Managed global physical and derivative client exposures to insolvent counterparties in the oil, metals and softs markets
  • Advised international financial institution on the global review of commodity finance products (various types of warehouse financing and ownership-based structures) across Europe, SE Asia, Africa, Latin America, MENA and the US. The project included working with local lawyers on developing standard forms of security documents and legal opinions for use in over 20 jurisdictions
  • Advised commodity finance banks on syndicated borrowing base facilities to commodity traders
  • Advised international financial institutions on various standard forms of documentation for receivables finance products offered to commodity traders
  • Advised trade and commodity finance banks on template documentation and internal policies for trade finance products, participation in trade facilitation programmes of development banks and selling down of trade assets

Who have our Partners worked with?

  • Traders and producers
  • Banks and alternative finance providers
  • Brokers
  • Shipping companies

Key Contacts

Veronika Koroleva

Partner

Commodities & Trade Finance and Receivables & Supply Chain Finance

Marc Weisberger

Partner

Commodities & Trade Finance

Luiz Costa

Partner

Dispute Resolution

News and Insights from our Partners


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