Linklaters

The firm’s profound understanding of how existing products work underpins its market leadership in the development of new and sophisticated derivatives products. Part of the firm's pre-eminent Capital Markets practice, the derivatives group regularly works closely with Linklaters’ pre-eminent global banking, corporate, energy, environment, insurance, intellectual property, investment management, litigation, pensions, real estate, regulatory, and tax practices on the market’s most important deals and legal issues. The group prides itself on its practical advice and ability to execute the most complex deals with the minimum of fuss.

Close contact with regulatory authorities around the world allow the team to advise on the regulatory (including regulatory capital) issues that arise from the structuring and marketing of derivatives products, regardless of the legal form of those products.  

Linklaters’ global team advises on derivatives, relating to all asset classes . The group handles OTC format and securitised derivatives in the form of bonds, MTNs and warrants as well as other forms of bespoke derivatives, whether entered into or issued by banks, corporates or SPVs. Major financial institutions also turn to Linklaters for advice on stock lending, repo, prime brokerage and collateral management documentation, as well as on disputes or regulatory investigations into derivatives transactions.

Recent Derivatives transactions include advising

• Advising PwC as administrators of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (“LBIE”). The administration was the biggest insolvency in corporate history involving gross assets and gross liabilities each in excess of US$600bn andmore than 200 companies across all major jurisdictions. A significant component of our advice to PwC, which extends across many practice areas including Banking, Restructuring, Corporate, and Employment, involves advising on a host of complex derivatives transactions, securitisations and structured products. One particular highlight has been a High Court case [Lomas-v-Firth Rixon, Inc] on the interpretation of Section 2(a) (iii) of the ISDA Master agreement. In brief, the Court upheld the application of the Section, relating to the ability of a non-defaulting party to suspend its payment and delivery obligations upon default by the other party.
• Advising the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) on producing the 2011 Equity Derivatives Definitions. These will represent the post credit crunch market standard documentation for equity swaps, options, forwards, equity-linked notes and structured equity financings, replacing the current 2002 definitions.
• Advising on the establishment of a number of “level two” programmes for issuing index-linked exchange traded securities under Barclays Bank’s iPath Global Structured Products Programme, which facilitate the issuance of securities that reference specific indices, including both equity indices and commodity indices. The securities are issued by Barclays Bank and are directly linked to the performance of the relevant index.
• Advising Deutsche Bank on the establishment of two UCITS III compliant funds to provide investor access to hedge fund investment strategies
• Advising RBS  on (a) £3.9bn sale of project finance portfolio and (b) £1.65bn sale of branches, both with associated hedge transactions