Alicia is a corporate finance lawyer with particular experience in real estate, acquisition finance, energy and infrastructure. She advises on secured, unsecured and general corporate lending and credit derivatives, with a focus on leveraged deals.
Alicia specialises in restructuring and insolvency, where she often advises funds, international banks and corporate clients on the restructuring of complex financial agreements. She has extensive international experience dealing with the financial arrangements of distressed corporate borrowers, to achieve an overall business restructuring, and with distressed M&As. She also assists with negotiating and documenting debt trades, especially distressed debt.
Alicia is admitted to practise law in England and Wales, Hong Kong and South Australia.
Expertise
- Restructuring
- Insolvency
- Debt trading (distressed and non-distressed debt trades)
- Corporate finance
- Distressed acquisitions
Experience
Corporate Finance
- Advised Cineworld of the Digital Film Finance Group on the financing structure in relation to the conversion of all its 77 cinemas to digital. The deal involved structuring a complex multiple jurisdiction security package.
- Advised a UK bank enforcing a £75 million facility to a group investing in landmark hotels in the UK. Advised the administrator and the bank in connection with the sale of the hotels and in connection with facilities provided by the bank to the purchaser.
- Advised Pyrrho Management Ltd in connection with its investment in Premier Oil Ltd.
- Advised (and advising) Sequoia (as arranger) and Sequoia IDF (as lender) in relation to financings of intercontinental submarine cable projects.
Restructuring
- Advised senior lenders of Citibank Tower on the restructuring of £1.6 billion of debt which saw AGC Equity Partners acquire 25 Canada Square.
- Advised on the resolution and winding-up committees of Kaupthing, including advice on numerous pan-European restructuring cases and on the legal aspects of closing out and settling their derivatives portfolio.
- Advised the senior lenders and subsequently the administrators (Grant Thornton LLP) of Sapphire on the restructuring, enforcement and sale of over £200 million loans secured on the Sapphire Retail Fund portfolio of shopping centres in the UK.
- Advised a senior lender on the restructuring of £355 million facilities to a specialist fund with a portfolio of over 25 hotels across the UK, including a debt equity swap involving offshore holdcos.
- Advised a syndicate of senior lenders on the successful restructuring of over £600 million senior and mezzanine facilities and swaps secured on an investment leased to an international hotel operator.
- Advised Kawa Solar Holdings on the restructuring of its APAC group, Conergy Asia & ME Pte. Ltd. and its subsidiaries (‘Conergy’ or the ‘Company’) which was achieved through the sale to certain funds managed by Tennenbaum Capital Partners and Goldman Sachs.
Please note: The experience list above may include examples of work completed prior to joining Keystone Law.
Recognition
Ranked in Chambers Global 2018 for Restructuring & Insolvency
Ranked in Chambers UK between 2012 and 2019 for Restructuring & Insolvency
Recommended in The Legal 500 between 2012 and 2016
A member of The Lawyer’s Circle
A member of the Trustee of Funds for Women Graduates
Career
Alicia qualified as a solicitor in Australia in 1992 and as a solicitor in England and Wales in 2002. Prior to joining Keystone Law in 2019, she worked at the following firms:
- McDermott Will & Emery
- Olswang
- DLA Piper
- Hogan Lovells