Senior Associate

PQE: 4 years +
Term: Permanent
Working hours: Full-time
Team: Banking and Finance
Location: Leeds
The firm

A leading UK law firm with a network of offices from the South Coast to Scotland, working together as one national team. An innovative practice and the first top 100 law firm to achieve “Gold Standard” Investors in People, our values and culture are not just words on our website but are the heartbeat of the firm. The lack of barriers between departments, a real lack of hierarchy, zero tolerance for arrogance and pomposity makes Shoosmiths a fantastic place to work.

The team

Our national banking and finance team advises clients on a range of financing transactions across a wide variety of sectors, often with a multi-jurisdictional element. Acting for borrowers, lenders and investors means we have a practical understanding of the needs of all parties to a financing transaction. Our expertise extends to corporate lending, leverage finance, asset finance, real estate finance (both investment and development), project finance and invoice discounting both on a bilateral and a syndicatable basis. We work closely with some of the UK's major banks and financial institutions, and have approved panel status with many of them.

Our excellent national team is going from strength to strength, having welcomed four new partners in the last twelve months. We are delighted to have a new banking partner joining our Leeds team in February 2021.  She has a particular focus on leveraged and venture debt.  We are now recruiting in order to support that new appointment.

The role

We have a fantastic opportunity for a senior associate to join our highly-regarded team. You will be able to work closely with the local and national partners on their matters and will be heavily involved in high value leverage finance transactions for our borrower and lender client base, including a wide range of private equity houses that we act for.  We would also expect you to be able to support and assist others in the team on a range of banking work, including real estate finance and general corporate banking.

We are looking for someone with strong general banking experience, but who ideally has a particular interest and experience in leverage finance transactions. You should be confident in liaising with borrowers, lenders and investors on the full transaction lifecycle and carrying out the day to day management of transactions, including running the condition precedent process and drafting and, where appropriate, negotiating security, intercreditor and loan documentation (both LMA and bank standard form). You will also have the opportunity to delegate to, and supervise, junior members of the team.

Equal opportunities

Shoosmiths is a committed Equal Opportunities employer promoting equality of opportunity. This means that everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, whatever their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.