Veronika Koroleva

Veronika Advises

• Banks and alternative finance providers
• Corporate borrowers

Experience Highlights

Structured commodity finance

• Advised an 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 includes working with local counsel on developing standard forms of security documents and legal opinions for use in warehouse financing in over 20 jurisdictions.
• Advised a London branch of a financial institution on a trade finance facility to a US importer of nuts and soft fruit to finance the storage and sale of products in the US. The transaction involved structuring and negotiating a bespoke security sharing and intercreditor arrangements with another bilateral lender to the borrower group covering the total of £65,000,000 of the new and existing trade finance debt of the borrower group in respect of their US and UK operations.
• Advised trade finance fund on a working capital finance facility to a UK mining company.
• Advised commodity finance banks on syndicated borrowing base facilities to commodity traders.
• Advised financial institutions on limited recourse prepayment facilities.
• Advised lender on a structured warehouse financing to an African commodity trader to finance the purchase and distribution of fertilizers in several African countries and on the subsequent restructuring of that facility.
• Advised commodity finance banks on warehouse finance facilities of agricultural commodities in Africa, Eastern Europe and the CIS.
• Advised Rand Merchant Bank as documentation agent and the initial mandated lead arrangers on the US$1.2 billion annual receivables-backed facility for the purchase of cocoa to Ghana Cocoa Board for crop season 2013/14. This annual facility is the largest soft commodity financing in Africa each year.

Trade finance, supply chain finance and receivables finance

• Advised international financial institution on the restructuring and expansion of the global supply chain / receivables finance product across North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Canada and the US.
• Advised trade finance fund on working capital receivables-backed facilities to a UK energy business to finance a series of strategic acquisitions by the borrower group.
• Advised international financial institution on various receivables-backed equipment financings in Latin America.
• Advised a financial institution on remittance-backed facilities to African financial institutions.
• Advised financial institutions on various trade finance products, such as transactional commodity finance, receivables finance, and bank to bank products and trade finance instruments. Advised on standard forms of agreements and numerous transactions concluded using these standard form documents as a basis.
• Advised international financial institutions on supplier-led receivables financing products as well as on invoice discounting/ receivables purchase/ forfaiting transactions.
• Advised financial institutions on implementation of a buyer-led receivables purchase programme with major corporate customers including programmes provided via electronic platforms.
• Advised financial institutions on selling down arrangements for buyer-led supply chain finance programmes and on participation in other banks’ supply chain finance programmes.
• Advised multi-lateral financial institutions on trade facilitation programmes.  Advising various financial institutions on participating in such trade facilitation programmes.

Restructuring work

• Advised the steering committee of international creditors on an innovative restructuring of Kazakhstan’s Alliance Bank’s $4.5bn debt in 2009/10.  The restructuring was the first to be carried out under newly adopted Kazakh legislation on bank restructuring post the financial crisis and was a “test case” for the subsequent bank restructurings in Kazakhstan.
• Advised Natixis as facility agent on the initial restructuring of a US$2bn pre-export facility to Rusal Group in 2009/10.  The restructuring involved US$7.8 billion of debt from overseas banks, over US$6 billion of deferred payment and contingent liabilities to Onexim, with the remainder owing to local Russian lenders. The facility was the largest outstanding PXF facility by the number of lenders in the syndicate.  Subsequently advising Natixis as facility agent on the harmonisation of terms of several pre-export facilities to Rusal Group.

Publications

• Served as member of editorial board of Trade and Forfaiting Review (2007 – 2013)
• Contributed to chapters “Waivers, standstills and workouts in trade finance” and “Insolvency and related final insolvency procedures” of Practitioner’s Guide to Trade and Commodity Finance (Sweet & Maxwell, 2012)

Articles

10 in 20: Legal year in review

On Coronavirus: Trade Finance Borrowers

7 Tips for Collateral Management: From LME Metals to Commingled Grain

Career History

Previous Law Firms

• Dentons (formerly Denton Wilde Sapte),
• Barclays Bank, secondee in-house counsel supporting trade finance business in the UK
• Andersen Legal

Education

• The College of Law, LPC
• The College of Law, CPE
• Moscow State University, Law