Banking & Finance

Our Banking & Finance Practice offers clients a steady hand through the legal and regulatory structures that govern this complex and highly regulated sector. We address the full range of banking & finance matters including complex and nuanced transactional and regulatory issues in a manner that is adapted to our clients’ requirements.

The Firm advises on conventional financing as well as cutting edge structured products. We handle both Indian Rupee and foreign currency-denominated financing for major banks and market-leading borrowers. Our experience includes advising on external commercial borrowings, refinancing, syndicated loans and club deals, reverse factoring, debt
issuances, project finance, asset finance, corporate finance, equipment financing and leasing, bank branch establishment, and bankruptcy and restructuring (including under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016).
We are recognised for our interdisciplinary approach which ensures that we find solutions to a range of distressed situations.

Our team’s experience ranges from handling complex and diverse cross-border financing deals to restructuring and reorganising non-performing assets for banks and financial institutions and their onward sale to Asset Reconstruction Companies or other financial institutions. We advise and represent leading international and domestic banks and non-banking financial companies in their recovery and ancillary actions before relevant courts and tribunals.

We act for leading banks, non-banking financial companies, and financial institutions, both international and domestic, a well as leaders in their field of borrowers across a range of sectors including entertainment, logistics, natural resources, ports, infrastructure, and telecommunications.

Indicative Experience

Corporates

Financing

• Advising Safeway Concessions (part of the Macquarie Group Limited and comprising 9 Indian concessionaires) with respect to raising approx. INR 50 billion financing from Yes Bank Limited for funding the concession fee for the first Toll Operate Transfer concession package in India and subsequent and multiple reconstitutions of the lenders’ consortium including refinancing of around INR 20 billion by HDFC Bank Limited.
• Advising Visakha Container Terminal Private Limited, a part of JM Baxi Group, with respect to raising the financing for the construction and operation of facilities at a new container terminal located at outer harbor, Visakhapatnam Port through (i) financial facilities approx. INR 3.9 billion from Indian lenders; and (ii) the issuance of unlisted, collateralized, redeemable, non-convertible debentures aggregating approx. INR 3.2 billion to a foreign portfolio investor related to a multi-lateral institution on a private placement basis.

Insolvency and Restructuring

• Advising and representing Jyoti Structures Limited with respect to the restructuring of its debt through the Joint Lender’s Forum, Strategic Debt Restructuring, and outside Strategic Debt Restructuring stages.
• Representing State Bank of India led core consortium consisting of ICICI Bank Limited, Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company Limited, and IDBI Bank with respect to a dispute over priorities of claim amongst members of consortium in the resolution process of Essar Steel India Limited under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.

Other

• Advising NIIF Infrastructure Finance Limited (formerly known as IDFC Infrastructure Finance Limited) with respect to: a. Refinance of a solar project of CleanMax Photovoltaic Private Limited; and b. Acquisition of project loan of INR 500 million extended by HDFC Bank to Amplus Power Solutions Private Limited and extension of additional loan of INR 200 million to Amplus Power Solutions Private Limited.
• Advising S.M.I.L.E Microfinance Limited with respect to transfer of its standard and non-standard assets to Northern Arc.