CASE STUDY: Multi-jurisdictional securitisation business sale
It’s not every day you get to shift more than £1bn in discrete amounts to several jurisdictions – and all by 2pm. But that’s exactly what happened when we closed the deal transferring London Mortgage Company to new owners.
London Mortgage Company distributed mortgages and secured loans through mortgage packagers and brokers. When its owner, Matlock Bank, decided to sell, it brought LG in at the start, to handle the legal side of everything from the international auction to final completion. The auction itself was straightforward.
We prepared the information memorandum, negotiated heads of terms and set up an online data room and several physical ones.
A big deal
When it came to the sale agreement and closure, things got more complex. London Mortgage Company’s loan book was funded through securitisations and warehouse bank facilities. Aside from the sheer volume of mortgages involved, this created an intricate web of contracts between funding banks, warehouse and securitisation vehicles, security trustees, insurers, packagers and other parties. These were spread across several jurisdictions.
To collect signatures for the paperwork we sent team members around Europe. Closing day itself demanded split-second timing across several currency exchanges. We were calculating and recalculating the amounts payable to each jurisdiction until the last minute. At 2pm the transaction was complete. In a business where time is quite literally money, that’s a big deal.
"We appreciated the team’s dedication, consistently high standards of work and, most importantly, good cheer while working long hours." Rachael Convery, Legal Manager UK, COFRA
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