Simon is a banking and finance lawyer with around twenty years’ experience in advising lenders and borrowers on traditional lending, structured finance, and real estate finance matters. He has particular expertise in non-traditional financing methods including offshore lending structures.
A specialist in corporate lending, real estate finance, investment funds and debt issuances, Simon acts for domestic and international institutions, including, banks, insurance companies, trustees and high-net-worth individuals (both as lenders and borrowers), advising on both offshore and onshore structures.
Simon’s varied career has included spending periods in-house at a large global investment bank, a FTSE-listed mortgage funder, a large independent fund administrator, and more recently an offshore insurer.
Expertise
- Asset and receivables financing
- Corporate lending to SMEs and larger corporates
- Real estate finance – investment and development
- Investment funds
- Peer to peer lending structures
- Enforcement of security and security reviews
- Secured bond issuance
- Restructuring
- Green energy project financing
Experience
- Acting for a large food marketing co-operative in relation to the negotiation of a new receivables sale agreement with a syndicate of banks in relation to the ongoing sale of trade receivables.
- Acting for District Estates in relation to the negotiation of a rolling and term credit facility of £30m to refinance its portfolio of over 60 investment properties around the UK.
- Acting for Clydesdale Bank on a number of large development facilities for real estate projects throughout the UK.
- Acting for the management team of a UK-based student housing business in relation to its sale to a large UK-based private equity fund. Also assisted the same entity in relation to the set-up of its first two funds.
- Acting for a large landowner in Herefordshire in relation to the successful financing of an anaerobic digestion plant for use in his farming business funded by an offshore-based funding bank.
- Acting for Cheyne Capital in relation to the set-up and ongoing advice of a new feeder fund for its Cayman- and Guernsey-based hedge funds in Luxembourg, which provides senior and mezzanine debt for UK-based property projects.
- Acting for Handelsbanken AB including advice and assistance to the life fund on a retained basis in relation to purchase and disposal of all types of fund investments.
- Acting as lead counsel for a Kuwaiti-based financial services company which was launching a Jersey-based private investment fund of circa £250m to invest in UK trading businesses and real estate including managing the set-up of all entities.
- Acting for a Guernsey-based lender in the set-up of a new insurance captive in Guernsey, reinsured by a large US insurer which was to issue surety bonds to UK investors in construction projects.
- Acting for a Jersey-based microcap hedge fund (£100m) investing in North American microcap stocks, and providing ongoing advice following an initial instruction to restructure the fund for tax and regulatory reasons, to exit one of the members of the general partner and thereafter to allow new investment by a large North American investor.
- Acting for a Russian high-net-worth individual in relation to a purchase of a carried interest and admission as a partner in the Investment Manager for a Cayman-based technology hedge fund.
Please note: The experience list above may include examples of work completed prior to joining Keystone Law.
Career
Simon qualified as a solicitor in 2000. Prior to joining Keystone Law in 2016, he worked at the following firms:
- Reynolds Portland Chamberlain
- McClure Naismith
- Deutsche Bank AG