Description

Despite the increased standardization of the documentation used in relation to multi-bank lending, the courts still struggle with fundamental issues of interpretation and basic issues concerning the legal classification of the relationships created by loan syndications and bond issues. For those unfamiliar with the area, an overview of multi-bank lending will be provided. The principal purpose of the seminar will be to highlight, for those more familiar with the area, issues of legal uncertainty in multi-bank lending, some of which have been the subject of recent judicial attention. Particular issues to be discussed include the extent to which minority lenders are entitled to overturn the decision of the majority on the grounds of oppression or breaches of notions of good faith; the duties and potential sources of liability for arranging banks and agent banks; the extent to which traditional trust law principles apply to functioning of bond trustees; the extent to which restrictions on transfer in the syndicated loan context can be circumvented by the syndicate members; and the recent judicial approaches to the “waterfall” and other provision in the standard-form syndicated loan documentation. There will be an opportunity for questions and discussion.

About The Speaker

Christopher Hare is the Travers Smith Associate Professor of Commercial and Corporate Law at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow at Somerville College and has degrees from Trinity College, Cambridge, Brasenose College, Oxford and Harvard Law School. After a period of time at the English Bar, he moved to a fellowship at Jesus College, Cambridge, followed by seven years as a Senior Lecturer at The University of Auckland, returning to Oxford in 2012 to take up his current post. Together with Professor Peter Ellinger, he is the editor of the latest edition of Ellinger’s Modern Banking Law (OUP, 2011) and is a contributor of a new chapter on syndicated lending for the forthcoming edition of Paget’s Law of Banking (LexisNexis, 2014). Christopher’s teaching and research interests focus on the areas of banking law, corporate finance, company law, commercial law and general private law.