Specialists in Commodity Finance, Trading and Hedging
Key contacts
Get in touch
For further advice please contact us for a consultation.
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+44 (0)3330 143 401
[email protected]
A team of highly-experienced transactional, regulatory and litigation specialists, with the ability to operate both practically and strategically towards financial objectives.
Testimonials
‘Good practical and legal knowledge delivered simply and clearly’.
‘Quality of knowledge, service and complete understanding of the underlying trade structuring processes‘.
The Legal 500 2023
“The team provides a timely response day and night and across multiple jurisdictions.”
Chambers UK 2023
“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 member of our team 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.
The team are currently ranked within both Chambers UK and The Legal 500 2023.
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 programmes 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
- Advised on a $15m matter on transitioning the Green Biofuels Ltd’s biofuels supply and credit support from an international commodity trader to BP plc.
- Advised on a £5m matter on a potential pre-export finance line and off-take between Torq Commodities AG and a manganese mine in South Africa.
- Advised Stronghold Global Finance UK Ltd, an alternative trade finance provider, as it builds its £100m+ multinational loan book.
- Advised Eterna PLC, a listed Nigerian fuel importer/distributor, in its ongoing $20m dispute with a Swiss trade finance bank over the ownership and control of a cargo of baseoil — a dispute concerning competing interests under sale contracts, bills of lading and pledges governed by various legal systems.
- Advised Worldwide Supply Chain Solutions Ltd and its shareholder on a £3m investment by a private equity firm to increase the client’s working capital capacity to source and distribute food packaging in the UK, Europe and the US.
- Advised Barens C&T SA, a Swiss commodity trader and investment firm, on a $5m working capital facility for a UK scrap metals merchant.
Who have our Partners worked with?
- Traders and producers
- Banks and alternative finance providers
- Brokers
- Shipping companies