Banking & Finance

Our Banking & Finance team provides our clients with a commercially driven approach. We work with Australian and international clients including financial institutions, alternate financiers and private lending funds, helping them to navigate regulatory change and advise on complex and sophisticated transactions. We also work with volume clients that require fast turnarounds. We tailor our service offering to assist the needs of our clients including by providing dedicated online reporting platforms.

About banking & finance

At Cornwalls, we help clients realise the opportunities arising from diverse economic and regulatory times. Clients look for advisers who can provide timely, pragmatic and expert advice that adds value and enables them to get on with their business. Our Banking & Finance team has the industry knowledge and resources to offer innovative solutions, coupled with strong legal and commercial expertise.

Our team knows what drives the industry and understands how the industry operates. We are conversant with the industry’s legal needs and know how to use our knowledge to deliver commercial outcomes.

We act for a range of entities in banking and financial services and the funds management industry, including financial institutions, alternate financiers, trustees of superannuation funds, wholesale and retail investment trusts, trustees & custodians, private lenders and financial planning groups. Our team represents major domestic and international clients (including banks) and provides compliance, transactional, structural and enforcement advice for lenders and investors.

We are a full-service banking and finance team offering both loan recovery and security enforcement for major financial institutions.

In today’s economic and finance regulatory environment, there will always be challenges and opportunities for our clients’ businesses. We strive to identify the legal and commercial issues, solutions and opportunities to help our clients stay ahead of the market.

Expertise

  • Anti-money laundering
  • Banking and regulatory
  • Counter terrorism financing regulation
  • Credit reporting regulation
  • Debt capital markets and note issues
  • Equipment financing
  • Fintech, blockchain and cryptocurrency
  • Initial coin offering
  • Mortgages and securities
  • Open banking
  • Payment products and systems
  • Personal Property Securities Act
  • Privacy
  • Private lending and managed lending funds
  • Receivables financing
  • Receivership and insolvency
  • Recoveries and enforcements
  • Secured and unsecured corporate finance, bilateral and syndicated
  • Security and mortgage enforcement
  • Trade financing
  • Unfair contract terms

Examples

Our experience includes:

  • acting for a large private company in meeting all lender’s required due diligence conditions, and advising on the facility and security documents required in a syndicated refinance deal totalling $900 million
  • re-drafting various security documents for an invoice-discounting financier, following its amalgamation with a mid-tier bank
  • acting for a mining company in a ‘reverse’ takeover of a US company, involving cross border issues and challenges ($30 million)
  • acting for management in a buyout of one of Australia’s largest mortgage originators ($150 million)
  • acting for a major lender in relation to the take-out finance secured over a 155-room hotel ($25 million)
  • advising on a multi-million dollar funding and syndicated lending arrangements associated with one of the largest property developments in Tasmania
  • advising a major financier on the implications of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act
  • acting for arrangers of notice issues and the subscriber; the notice issues are generally secured by securities held under a security trust arrangement and can be subordinated to other facilities
  • preparing standard form asset based facility documents and associated securities for several financiers
  • acting for an institution regarding its adoption of the Basel II Operating Risk procedures, and reviewing and advising on the effectiveness of securities and ease of enforcement of securities
  • acting for a bank in the sale of a loan portfolio involving over 100 loans for retirement homes and other real property; the estimated loan value was more than $30 million
  • acting for a bank in relation to providing finance worth approximately $240 million for the purposes of establishing a stamp duty savings arrangement involving Delaware (USA), British Virgin Islands, the Channel Islands, England and Luxembourg
  • advising on the documentation of a national bank regarding their consumer credit compliance on communications to their clients and ability to amend suppliers’ agreements to meet the new privacy banking requirements issued by ASIC and APRA
  • acting for a public to private company relative to the provision of finance for a joint venture with various companies to maintain and market privatised utilities for the supply of energy and telecommunications
  • completing an anti-money laundering audit for a national equipment and invoice financing leader
  • advising on the “safe harbour” provisions and application for a national piggeries operator and the perfection of their shareholder loans and securities
  • advising a client on their recovery and security position associated with the multi-million dollar collapse of a financier
  • acting for custodians, responsible entities and lenders to managed investment schemes throughout Australia and the restructuring of finance and assets involving managed investment schemes
  • acting for a major mining company in restructuring finances with existing lenders and guarantors, including the state and federal governments, and establishing employee loan and capital guarantee schemes
  • conducting due diligence of a lending portfolio and documentation involving lending in excess of $1.2 billion
  • establishing a national lending service provider processing over 50,000 transactions per annum and four national commercial lenders
  • advising a multinational company on Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing legislation, establishing their AML/CTF documents and audits, and successfully applying to APRA to have $2 million per year of legislative fees waived
  • documenting the funding facilities required for many large commercial and residential developers, including negotiation with builders on the lender’s behalf, review and approval of pre-sale contracts and pre-lease arrangements.

Banking & Finance Articles

Our Experts

John Hutchings

Chairman, Melbourne

Mayank Gupta

Partner, Sydney

Nick Amore

Partner, Melbourne

Paul Agnew

Partner, Brisbane

Carolyn Falcone

Partner, Melbourne

Chris Kintis

Partner, Sydney

David Kreltszheim

Partner, Melbourne

Bill Moustafa

Partner, Melbourne

Gregory Clayton

Consultant, Melbourne

Nima Power

Senior ASSOCIATE, MELBOURNE

Zhe Kwan

Senior Associate, Melbourne

Chloe Clarkson

Associate, Brisbane

Katarina Marinovic

Associate, Melbourne

Kyle Costigan

Associate, Brisbane

Stebin Sam

Associate, Melbourne

Raymond Pantalleresco

Associate, Melbourne

Reem Haidar

Associate, Sydney