Sullivan & Worcester LLP

Sullivan & Worcester LLP’s London office is a multi-disciplinary practice advising on trade and trade finance, commodity and export finance, banking and securitisation, securities, acquisition, project and real estate development finance, insurance, tax, compliance and regulatory issues, and all aspects of dispute resolution. The team advises banks, financial institutions and funds across their business activities and counts leading trade finance industry bodies among its clients, including BAFT (the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade), ITFA (the International Trade and Forfaiting Association) and the ICC (the International Chamber of Commerce). With London as a global centre for trade, export and commodities finance, a significant proportion of trade and export finance work is delivered from the office, while the team also advises on matters worldwide with a particular emphasis on emerging markets in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the CIS and Latin America. The London office forms part of the firm’s international and cross‑border finance offering, providing tailored solutions in cross‑border debt and equity financings and collaborating with colleagues in the United States on transactions involving English and New York law.

The firm has been recognised with awards including ‘Best Export Finance Law Firm’ at the GTR Leaders in Trade Awards 2023, ‘Best trade or supply chain finance law firm’ in 2022, ‘Legal Innovation in Trade’ from Trade Finance Global (2023), and ‘Best Trade Finance Law Firm’ at TFG’s 2022 Awards; Geoffrey Wynne received the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ at the RFIx Awards in 2024. Core London experience includes commodity financing (pre‑export, prepayment, borrowing base, reserve base, inventory financings and commodity repos); receivables financing (supply chain finance programmes, invoice discounting, factoring and forfaiting); structured financing (asset acquisitions, securitisations, hedges, credit derivatives and synthetic securitisations); trade services (use of trade finance instruments and uniform rules of practice); export credit agency finance (short, medium and long‑term and multi‑source); corporate lending and acquisition finance (syndicated and bilateral credit facilities, acquisition facilities, bridge‑to‑bond, unitranche and senior/second‑lien leveraged financings); digitalisation of trade finance, fintech and electronic banking (including blockchain and electronic payment undertakings); insurance for trade finance from policy wording to contested claims; project finance including infrastructure and energy; restructuring and special situations (non‑performing facilities, workouts, rescue and litigation financings, super‑senior credit); Islamic finance (ijara, wakala, mudarabah and istisna’a structures); trade disputes (risk mitigation and dispute resolution via arbitration, expert determination, court and ADR); and compliance and regulation (Basel III, bribery and corruption, sanctions, anti‑money laundering and counter‑terrorism in the trade and export finance context).