A&O plays leading role in significant Greek non-performing loan transactions
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Allen & Overy has been instrumental in a series of notable transactions designed to reduce Greek bank non-performing loan (NPL) exposures. A&O has acted for a mix of both banks and funds on portfolio sales of NPLs structured through securitisations.
Recent transaction highlights include:
- Advising Bain Capital and Fortress Investment Group on Frontier, which involved the purchase of 95% of the mezzanine and junior notes from a securitisation backed by a portfolio of non-performing exposures sold by National Bank of Greece with a total gross book value of EUR6 billion.
- Advising Alpha Bank, one of Greece's four systemic banks, on Cosmos, which involved the sale of 51% of mezzanine and junior securitisation notes to Davidson Kempner. The securitisation notes relate to a portfolio of non-performing credit with a gross book value of EUR3.4 billion.
- Advising Eurobank, one of Greece's four systemic banks, on Mexico, which involved the sale of a portion of mezzanine and junior securitisation notes of the EUR5.2 billion nominal value multi-asset NPE portfolio of Eurobank S.A.
These key transactions follow on from A&O’s involvement on other landmark Greek NPL deals, including Eurobank’s Pillar and Cairo and Alpha Bank’s Galaxy.
Cairo (closed in 2020) and Galaxy (closed in 2021), valued at EUR7.5bn and EUR10.8bn respectively, were complex transactions involving restructures of Eurobank and Alpha Bank and were the first two transactions to feature a guarantee on the senior debt from the Greek state under the Hellenic Asset Protection Scheme and were structured to achieve Significant Risk Transfer recognition under the European Capital Requirements Regulation (575/2013).
Sally Onions, lead partner on these groundbreaking transactions, commented: “We are proud to have been involved in the landmark transactions involving Greek non-performing loans. Our clients trust our expertise in this area and as a result, we are the go to legal counsel in this space for both banks and investors. We look forward to continuing to help our clients with their most complex problems.”
Sally Onions was assisted by Senior Associates Tim Monahan and Josephine Suen, with help from associates Sinan Alfurayh, Nika Silva and Kathryn Welsh.