Rob is Head of the Banking and Finance team at Pannone.

Rob’s practice includes advising on all elements of corporate banking transactions involving domestic and multi-jurisdictional debt funding. He acts for a broad range of leading financial institutions, corporate borrowers and institutional investors in the region, throughout the United Kingdom and overseas. 

His main practice areas are:

• leveraged and acquisition finance
• corporate financing and restructuring
• real estate finance
• bilateral and syndicated lending and receivables
• asset based lending. 

Rob also advises on debt novation, security transfers, intercreditor documentation and security enforcement action.

Rob is nationally recognised as a Leader in the Field of banking and finance, and his work has led him to be recognised in the top tiers of finance lawyers in the North West.  He is listed as a “leading individual in the North West” (Legal 500 2010).  The Chambers UK Guide  has described him as “a sound technical lawyer who inspires confidence" and who "is positive, clever and good at moving deals along” (Chambers 2008), ‘practical, sensible and commercial’ (Chambers 2009), ‘earning praise for his practical and considered approach’ (Chambers 2010) and ‘demonstrating commercial astuteness and offering practical solutions to clients’ (Chambers 2011).

Best career moment: There are too many to mention.

Rob has particular expertise in:

• leveraged and acquisition finance (primarily in the mid-market to sub-£20m transactions, and including financing public-to-private acquisitions, management buy-outs, management buy-ins and institutional buy-outs)
• real estate finance (including acting on financing the acquisition, development, refinancing or forward funding of a broad variety of real estate assets, including prestige office buildings, industrial and retail portfolios, hotels and leisure facilities, residential portfolios, environmental assets and ground rent portfolios)
• corporate refinancing and restructuring

Rob’s recent transactions include: 

• acting for Air Energi Holdings Limited, a company specialising in the provision of technical specialists for the global oil and gas industry, on its USD 50m refinancing with HSBC Bank plc
• acting for Santander Real Estate in providing £63.6m loan facilities to a major North West based property group to acquire an investment portfolio of supermarket, warehousing and retail properties with an initial market value in excess of £92m
• acting for Lloyds TSB Bank plc on the provision of £30m debt facilities to Cloverleaf Restaurants Limited for the purposes of refinancing existing debt and providing land acquisition and development facilities to assist in the construction of new restaurant sites

Rob qualified as a solicitor in 1996 and became a partner in 2005.