DLA Piper reports £1.4bn of transactions

MANCHESTER-based law firm DLA Piper’s finance team has recorded an ‘exceptionally busy’ first quarter of transactions with more than £1bn worth of transactions.

The Manchester team – led by the three partners Matt Christmas, Hans Scheiwiller and Liz Sweeney – , has clocked-up £1.4 billion of finance projects since the start of the year.

The transactions include advising banks and corporate borrowers across a range of sectors.

Significant deals in the first quarter included advising Matalan on its £525m refinancing exercise, acting for Pilkington-owner NSG UK Enterprises on three refinancing projects totalling in excess of £700m, and advising RBS and HSBC on the £170m refinancing of, and loan extension to, North West commercial landlord Bruntwood.

The Manchester team has also been advising long-standing client Anglo Irish on various loan transfers to Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA).

NAMA has been set-up to remove bad or impaired assets held by the country’s financial institutions.

Matt Christmas said: “This figure represents an exceptionally busy start to 2010. We have one of the largest finance teams in the city and these impressive transactions demonstrate our ability to handle complex, large scale financings.”