The trainer is a highly experienced and sought-after lawyer, advisor, educator, mentor and writer. For almost 30 years and across several different industries, he has written and delivered a wide range of bespoke training courses for individuals, businesses, professional associations and educational establishments.
Over a 20-year legal career, he has advised banks & financial institutions, asset and receivables financiers, alternative lenders, large and SME corporates, private equity houses, pension trustees, regulators, social housing providers, guarantors and private individuals on a wide range of complex UK and international cross-border banking and finance matters on transactions with individual values of in excess of £2 billion. These have included global loans, investment grade lending, leveraged finance acquisitions, real estate investment & development finance, asset and receivables finance, bridge finance, bonds, private wealth finance, project finance, securitisations, social housing finance, trade finance, higher education finance, intragroup lending, netting and cash pooling arrangements and general corporate lending transactions including cross border syndicated and club deals. He has also advised on directors’ duties issues, restructurings and complex multi-layered intercreditor arrangements.
The trainer completed his formal training and qualified as a banking & finance solicitor in Leeds at Cobbetts LLP in 2005, before moving to London in 2007 to continue his career at Denton Wilde Sapte LLP (now Dentons) and subsequently with Wragge & Co LLP (now Gowling WLG (UK) LLP).
He moved to an in-house counsel role at Barclays Bank PLC in 2010, working in their Sales Finance and Trade & Working Capital Finance teams, advising on a wide range of UK and international receivables finance, inventory finance, securitisation and other asset finance matters (including invoice discounting, factoring, recourse and non-recourse financing, selective receivables finance, supply finance and full asset-based lending agreements). He also worked on secondment with the HSBC (UK) Invoice and Equipment Finance legal and business teams, advising on UK and cross border receivables and asset based lending transactions, including hire purchase, lease finance and asset purchase finance.
In 2015, he returned to Gowling WLG (UK) LLP, to become a professional support lawyer in their banking & finance team, responsible for education & training, knowhow, implementation of legal technology and providing cross-jurisdictional advice on complex areas of law. He has also written and delivered training for several professional associations including the Loan Market Association and the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA).
Having worked both in private practice and in-house with leadership, sales, relationship, risk, compliance, legal, transaction management, operations and product teams, the trainer understands the obstacles that need to be overcome on transactions and how to get deals over the line successfully. Consequently, his training focuses on providing students with the essential foundations, commercial awareness and approaches to thinking which are necessary to achieve this.
The trainer sits on an advisory board for a major legal publisher and advisory panel for a leading international banking and finance journal. He has also sat on the legal & technical committee for ABFA (now UK Finance).
He has also participated in a number of major law reform projects and consultations including the University of Oxford led Secured Transactions Law Reform project, the City of London Law Society’s Secured Transaction Code project, the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce consultation on crypto-assets, distributed ledger technology and smart contracts and the England & Wales Law Commission’s calls for evidence on smart contracts and digital assets. He has also participated in several UK Government legislative consultations.
As a mentor, he has also worked on the law firm panel at Barclays Eagle Labs Legal Tech Hub, London providing help and support to a wide range of new start-up legal-tech businesses from the UK and overseas.