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Commercial conclusion
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Left to right: Lauren Rutherford, Victoria Walton, Gillian Moir and Charlotte Excell
Following the conclusion of the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) last year, we were delighted to announce that our Commercial Property team completed over £75m such transactions for Atom Bank plc (Atom) between June 2020 and 31 August 2021.
A Government-backed scheme, CBILS was introduced as a lifeline to assist SME firms with a turnover of less than £45 million that had lost or experienced deferred revenues because of the impact of COVID-19.
Swinburne Maddison has been working with Atom since its formation and is a member of Atom’s legal panel for secured business lending. One hundred and seven loans amounting to £75 million were transacted during the eight-month period, primarily by the Commercial Property team with the Corporate team on hand to assist with any corporate and commercial elements of funding requests when required.
The volume of work was such that at the peak of demand, eight lawyers from across the firm were working hard to make sure everything was delivered on time.
The Durham-headquartered Atom, established in 2014, was the UK’s first app-based bank and as such, instructions came to Swinburne Maddison from all over the UK throughout the pandemic, with loans ranging in value from £99,990 to £5 million. through CBILS of £5 million. Firms in Bedford, Retford, Bridlington, Essex, London and Bristol requested sums between £3 million and £4.7 million and a Middlesbrough company received the seventh highest loan of £2.2 million.
As partner and head of the Commercial Property team, Victoria Walton, explains, the team really didn’t take their foot off the gas for a moment:
“All deadlines were met, and the team worked extremely well. It was a superb team effort, which could not have been met without everyone’s support. The work was extremely time pressured, particularly towards the end of the scheme when loans could not be re-sanctioned, and each transaction relied on significant volumes of documentation to be provided by those seeking funding, which was not always available until quite late in the transaction.
“We were also very conscious that these loans represented a lifeline for many of the businesses we were dealing with, so there was an enormous amount of pressure on our team to coordinate everything in time to hit the completion dates and get the funding in place.”
Commenting on Swinburne Maddison’s work, Atom Bank’s technical lending lead, Paul Jordan, said:
“The support we got from Swinburne Maddison throughout the pandemic was great and we really appreciated the effort. It was an extremely busy time for us all.
“In August, after CBILS ended, we launched our Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS) product range after being accredited as an approved lender by the British Business Bank. These loans are also designed to provide essential support to businesses in the wake of COVID-19 and replace CBILS, so we are delighted to be working with Swinburne Maddison again in transacting these loans. We have an excellent working relationship with the Swinburne team.”
