Andrew Hallgarth

I am a Finance & Financial Regulation partner based in London. I advise on the financing of transactions and projects in all of the firm's sectors across the globe. I have a particular focus on emerging markets.

I use experience, built up through many years of working on the myriad of matters that my banking colleagues and I have helped clients with in a multitude of jurisdictions, to ensure the efficient and effective conduct of transactions and projects.

From my very first transaction in 1997 (the financing of the first commercial television station in Hungary) I have been very conscious that while protecting a client's interests it is important to take a collaborative approach - since our clients and their counterparties will need to work together long after the lawyers have stopped work.

Having worked for development banks, multilateral banks commercial banks, funds and borrowers on transactions in places ranging from Almaty to Zagreb, I am familiar with the issues and complexities that can be encountered when marrying English law financing with the many other legal systems that may govern aspects of any transaction and the importance of a co-operative approach to working with all relevant counsel.

Whether it is helping to design and roll-out facilities to support energy efficiency in Eastern Europe; or the financing of wide-bodied aircraft by a combination of loans, Islamic finance and bonds; or the financing of pharmaceutical production facilities across North Africa; or the acquisition financing of a retail group operating across the Balkans; or the consensual restructuring of a group of companies in Belarus; or risk participations in sports financings, my colleagues and I can assist.

• Advising an international finance institution and a commercial bank on financings providing over EUR 250m to a building materials group to construct and upgrade factories across the CIS and in Luxembourg.
• Advising a club consisting of a multilateral bank and a leading Chinese bank on the financing of rail infrastructure in Turkey under arrangements that need to unify the very different approaches the institutions and address the fast-evolving legal position in Turkey with respect to the rights of banks in insolvency situations.
• Advising a development bank on the efficient roll-out of loan facilities (with EU-backed loss protection) to commercial banks in the Balkans in order to facilitate loans to SMEs to undertake investments related to green-energy or preparation for accession of their home jurisdiction to the EU.
• Working with a syndicate of banks to finance the acquisition of a Balkan telecommunications company (a transaction that built on our sector expertise and our work for the banks in the complex financing an earlier privatisation).
• Advising the project company on the first stage financing for a GBP 1 billion municipal regeneration project in the UK involving the balancing of a range of interests and the need to ensure that the project company could proceed with the follow-on stages and financing as seamlessly as possible.