Getting To Grips with Key Intercreditor Agreement Concepts

The trainer is a highly experienced lawyer, educator and writer. For almost 30 years and across several industries, he has written and delivered a wide range of bespoke training for individuals, businesses, professional associations and educational establishments.

The trainer has advised banks, alternative lenders, asset finance houses, borrowers, private equity houses, guarantors and pension trustees on a wide range of UK and cross-border banking and finance transactions. These have included syndicated investment grade and global loans, leveraged finance acquisitions, real estate investment & development finance, asset and receivables finance, forward flow transactions, bridging finance, securitisations, social housing finance, higher education finance and general corporate borrowing. He has also advised on restructurings and complex intercreditor arrangements and drafted and reviewed reports/certificates on title on a wide range of real estate transactions.

The trainer is currently a partner with the law firm Gunnercooke LLP. He completed his formal training and qualified as a banking & finance solicitor in Leeds with the law firm, 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 Trade & Working Capital team, 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 has also worked on secondment with the HSBC (UK) Invoice and Equipment Finance legal and business teams, advising on UK and cross-border asset-based lending transactions, including hire purchase, lease finance and asset purchase finance.

From 2015 to 2023, the trainer was a professional support lawyer in the banking & finance team at Gowling WLG (UK) LLP, where he was responsible for education & training, briefing notes, precedents, legal technologies and providing advice across the firm and its international offices 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.

• Develop your commercial understanding of intercreditor principles that can be applied to drafting and negotiating different types of intercreditor agreements.
• Understand how and why an intercreditor agreement controls cash flows between different creditors.
• Understand who needs to be a party to an intercreditor agreement and why.
• The structure and main commercial aspects of an intercreditor agreement, and why they are required.
• The nuances of how the structure and type of transaction can impact intercreditor drafting.
• Understand the risks of making assumptions when drafting intercreditor agreements.
• The different treatment of creditors within an intercreditor structure and core rights and restrictions.

Our intercreditor agreement course is primarily aimed at:

• Lawyers who are new to drafting English law-governed intercreditor agreements and wish to develop a solid understanding of intercreditor agreement principles.
• Lawyers who need a refresher on intercreditor basics.
• Any lawyer who wants to improve their ability to understand and explain intercreditor mechanics in plain English (a skill that is of fundamental importance to all lawyers, particularly in an age where drafting is becoming more automated).
• Non-lawyers who are new to dealing with intercreditor arrangements and who wish to gain a foundational understanding of intercreditor concepts to help their interactions with lawyers.

Intercreditor agreements are an important ingredient in many financial transactions.

Whilst intercreditor agreement templates, including the Loan Market Association’s intercreditor agreements, can provide a useful starting point for drafting, however in practice, they often need to be adapted to accommodate particular deal structures and address underlying commercial risks.

This means approaching intercreditor agreements can feel daunting and be fraught with danger for the inexperienced.

In an age of increasing AI use, it can be tempting to delegate drafting or thinking to AI or document automation tools. However, this comes with many risks, as has been highlighted by the courts in the UK and overseas. Therefore, a good foundational understanding of intercreditor concepts remains of vital importance to those working in this field.

Furthermore, failing to understand intercreditor agreement concepts from a commercial perspective can lead to difficulties when approaching drafting or reviewing intercreditor agreements, which can lead to drafting mistakes and important commercial considerations being overlooked.

Our intercreditor agreements training course has been designed to provide a solid foundational understanding of intercreditor principles from a commercial perspective. It will help develop your skills and understanding in drafting or reviewing intercreditor agreements.