BANKING AND FINANCE|Allens By Kayla Lehmann, Lawyer Allens has one of the largest Banking and Finance (B&F) teams in Perth, with two partners and about 15 team members. Nationally, the practice group has 20 partners and about 100 lawyers. The Perth team works on a diverse range of matters, including: • project financing (especially in relation to construction and energy and resources projects); • corporate financing; • leveraged financing; • acquisition financing; and • debt capital markets. We advise borrowers and lenders in domestic and international cross-board transactions. It is quite common for the matters we work on to span multiple jurisdictions. For example, we will often work both with onshore and offshore banks and borrowers (based out of many different countries) or take security over assets based in other countries. This means we often work closely with lawyers based in many jurisdictions. As a lot of the work we do interacts with other areas, we will also work with other Allens teams. For example, we regularly work alongside the Corporate team on corporate or acquisition financing (i.e. financing for acquiring another company), and with the Projects teams on project and construction financings. Companies may go through insolvency or administration processes, and in these instances we assist the restructuring and insolvency teams by tying up the companies’ financing and assisting them through any liquidity concerns. The flexibility of working from home throughout the pandemic has also resulted in increased collaboration on matters between Perth and our offices in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, with Perth lawyers increasingly assisting with diverse Eastern states-based matters (such as funds and derivatives work). We have experience acing on both the borrower and lender side of transactions. On the lender side, we are on the panel for each of the major Australian banks and also act for many of the international and investment banks and many non-bank lenders. On the borrower side, we work with a range of clients including in the 31
construction, government, shipping, healthcare, property and resources sectors. While we are primarily focused on the ‘finance’ elements of working with these clients, to fund a company or a project you need an understanding of the operational side of the business - so by working in B&F you get a great insight into a range of different companies and projects. Some exciting transactions we have assisted with recently include: • acting for the lenders to Northern Star Resources on the debt financing to purchase a 50% interest in the Kalgoorlie Super Pit; • acting for Wesfarmers on the refinancing of its $1.25billion syndicated facility by entering into bilateral revolving cash advance facilities and bespoke credit facilities with a number of relationship banks. We also recently acted for Wesfarmers again on converting a separate debt facility into a $400 million sustainability-link loan agreement with Commonwealth Bank of Australia. This loan was one of the first of its kind in Australia and was linked to internal environmental and social governance targets; and • acting for a syndicate of banks on the initial US$1.2 billion syndicated project finance facility in relation to the Karara Iron Ore Project, the subsequent upsizing of the facility to US$1.8 billion and the complete refinancing of the syndicated financing. As a junior in B&F, you will work closely in small teams (typically a partner, one senior associate/ associate and one junior, with additional team members depending on the size and complexity of the matter). Juniors will often have a first go at the majority of the documents (especially security documents and conditions precedent documents), which will then be settled by someone more senior. The junior on the matter will generally be in charge of acting as a quasi ‘project manager’, keeping track of where the matter is at and ensuring that things are progressing. The variety of transactions worked on in B&F means you will generally work across a number of matters at once, rather than one large matter at a time. This means you get great exposure to a variety of different types of matters and get to work with a lot of different people, which is a terrific way of gaining experience as a junior. There is also a lot of scope for client interaction and matter responsibility at a junior level.
