Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) today (11 January 2012) announced that it has made a further hire to its Banking & Capital Markets (BCM) Group, with the appointment of structured finance specialist Prashanth Satyadeva , a partner in the securitisation team at Clifford Chance following the announcement of the hire of structured finance partner Simon Small.
Prashanth advises banks, funds, corporates and other market participants on securitisations and asset-backed finance structures across numerous sectors. He has worked on various innovative and ground breaking structures, including structuring the first building society covered bond, advising on the first term rated pan European car rental securitisation and advising on the first rated securitisation of self-storage properties in Europe – without using special purpose entities.
Prashanth will join the structured finance team, led by ex Clifford Chance partner, Paul Severs, which has a growing reputation in the market for working on high profile and complex deals advising issuers such as Tesco and Thames Water and financial institutions including Lloyds Banking Group, RBS and Goldman Sachs. Recent transactions of note in which the firm has been involved include the Tesco Gold securitisations and the widely publicised Project Isobel for RBS.
BLP has demonstrated a keen commitment to growing its finance practice over the past year through lateral hires. In addition to the hires in the structured finance team, the firm hired asset finance expert Keith Wilson from Paul Hastings, leveraged finance expert Paul Simcock from Skadden Arps and project finance expert Andrei Baev from Allen & Overy.
Matthew Kellett, the managing partner of BLP’s Finance department, said: “The Finance team at BLP continues to grow from strength to strength. Our continued investment in recruiting leading individuals is paying dividends, with a growing reputation in the market for technical excellence and commercial awareness and the resources to handle large, complex and high profile deals.”
He added: “Structured finance is an area in which we have a growing business and reputation and we anticipate further growth in the future. Prashanth’s securitisation and structured finance expertise adds to our bench strength and our ability to serve the needs of our clients who are looking to monetise assets and manage balance sheets through securitisations, debt fund structures and asset sales. His experience of working on highly complex and innovative transactions compliments the capabilities of our existing team, which includes partner Lucy Oddy who joined from Clifford Chance in 2010.”
