Our specialist team of Banking and Finance lawyers are based between our Cardiff and London offices and form one of the UK’s leading teams. We advise a broad range of domestic and multi-national organisations on a range of finance transactions, from basic secured and unsecured lending, to drafting and negotiating complex syndicated loan facilities.

We work on all kinds of debt finance arrangements, including acquisition finance, refinancing existing facilities, real estate finance, development loans, and intercreditor issues. We work closely with our commercial property team on real estate finance issues, and our corporate and commercial team providing support on banking and debt finance issues for our corporate clients.

We advise a broad spectrum of clients on their debt finance arrangements with lenders. Our clients range from large multi-national corporates and SMEs to public bodies, social housing providers and charities. Our clients benefit from our strong relationships with our lender clients, together with our in-depth understanding of bank requirements through our work with the same.

We are appointed to the panel of many of the UK’s leading clearing banks and private bank and we are proud to work with a number of exciting challenger banks, FinTechs and alternative lenders. We also have extensive experience acting for Welsh Government and other public bodies in providing debt finance and grant funding for projects in Wales.

Many of our lawyers have worked for leading firms in London, large corporate groups and financial institutions both in the UK and abroad. We also have a long history of placing our lawyers on secondment with clients. You will benefit from our insight and understanding of your commercial needs, demonstrated through the quality and speed of our delivery of our services and advice.

Our banking and finance team is, by some distance, the largest specialist banking and finance team in Wales and one of the largest in the Southwest region.

With 3 highly experienced partners, 4 qualified lawyers, and 2 permanent staff entirely dedicated to banking and finance work, we have the largest specialist team in Wales solely practising in the banking and finance sector, advising on some of Wales’s most significant debt finance transactions and regularly acting on loans outside of Wales. Our real estate finance team (comprised of 1 partner and 3 lawyers) is now incorporated into the banking & finance team and delivers a seamless service on your property and development debt finance projects.

We maintain our reputation as a market leader in the field of social housing borrowing and continue to advise on loan facilities for Welsh housing associations, including new facilities, variations of existing facilities and private placement bonds.

We consistently win places on solicitor panels and framework agreements for banks and other institutional lender clients. Our panel appointments include Metro Bank, Lloyds Bank, HSBC, NatWest, RBS, Santander, Hodge Bank, Principality, Latham and Castlebridge Finance, amongst others.

We are a Band 1 ranked team and have a long-standing reputation for our work in the sector in Wales. We continue to work really hard for our clients to maintain this position in the market in Wales. We ensure all instructions and transactions are led by the partners in our team and all our team members receive continuous development and training to maintain very high standards for you.

Key contact

Dominic Marshall

Partner

Dominic is a partner and head of the banking and finance team. Dominic is a vastly experienced banking and finance lawyer who, since joining Hugh James in 2010 has grown and developed the banking team into a leading player, acting for high street banks, challenger banks, financial institutions and building societies.

“…their expertise, knowledge of the sector and the stakeholders involved was not only invaluable to us but also a large factor in completing the arrangements in a timely manner.”

Jeff Collins, Director at Great Point Studios

…interactive and keeps clients advised, also making sure deals go through as quickly as possible.

Chambers & Partners

Really approachable, and not afraid of picking up the phone to answer our questions as opposed to writing long emails.

Chambers & Partners

Why use us?

100% partner-led

The ratio of our team’s partners to other lawyers is significant and we know that’s important to you. Every instruction we receive is partner-led, so that we maintain exceptional quality and supervision. We ensure cost efficiencies are maintained by the quality of transaction management (with each matter led by a partner). We feel that it is unusual to offer such a high ratio of partners to other lawyers on these matters and our clients frequently comment how important this is to them.

Unrivalled expertise and seniority

What enhances the clear gap between us and other banking teams is that we have three partners who specialise entirely on banking and finance work advising lenders and corporate borrowers, whereas the second-tier firms are not able to offer this same level of expertise, service and seniority.

Dedicated client relationship officer

We have a dedicated client relationship officer who manages activities and workloads for our institutional clients including MI delivery, regular general communications, events, training and interdepartmental introductions.

Added value services

We provide a comprehensive variety of training workshops on a broad range of aspects including the use of electronic signatures, the anatomy of a loan agreement, intercreditor arrangements, development finance, real estate finance, LMA market and documents and risk management, recorded Q&A sessions on current issues for FDs of housing associations to consider and an introduction to sustainable finance. We also provide lawyers on secondment. We make every effort to include you in our network and introduce you to each other to assist with the generation of business for you.

City expertise with regional market knowledge

A number of our team members trained and worked in the city and/or for large international firms before joining Hugh James. This enables our team to truly deliver “City expertise” blended with regional market knowledge and a solid network of clients.

Ability to accommodate commercial requirements of the clients with its ESG aspirations

In the current market, where sustainable finance and ESG requirements have become more and more important in finance documents, our Hugh James banking team has skilfully managed a number of transactions where the sustainable finance and ESG covenants needed to be balanced with the commercial objectives of the transaction.

Our services:

Our team provides legal documentation and due diligence services to various banking clients in connection with commercial lending transactions. Under these contracts there are continuous work-streams with new, ongoing and post-completion debt finance activities being carried out at the same time on various files. These transactions are all managed and supervised by partners within the banking and finance team supported by other members of the team, and solicitors from other teams (such as real estate finance or corporate) as needed.

To increase efficiency, governance and speed to market, for some of our banking clients, we designed and created a bespoke IT solution through which we received instructions, and our clients could monitor live status. This streamlined our process for receiving and processing instructions and allowed us to create loan and security quickly and accurately. We utilised a digital case management system which could be used and viewed by all relevant team members internally which would be updated in real-time. This also updated to an online portal where the banks can login and see the status of documents being drafted and sent out and any other CP to drawdown.

Once matters have completed the case management system tracks post-completion work such as registrations at Companies House, the Land Registry and the creation of a completion bible with copies of all relevant documents.

Specialist sector advice:

We have dedicated experts who are experienced in acting for borrowers and lenders within specialist sectors. We understand the demands and complexities unique to each sector, allowing us to tailor our advice accordingly. To find out more, visit our dedicated sector pages.

Major UK banks such as HSBC, Santander, Lloyds, Natwest and RBS;
Challenger banks such as Metro Bank, Hodge Bank, Atelier Finance, Arbuthnot Latham, Investec;
Alternative finance lenders such as the Development Bank of Wales;
Building societies such as Principality.

Private companies from a wide range of sectors including: manufacturers, pubs, bars and breweries, hotels and conference facility providers, financial service providers, technology design and manufacture companies, sports clubs, and property developers, ranging from private investors to large multi-national companies;
Not-for-profit entities including education providers and charities; and
Housing associations.