Emily Bernstein is an experienced private banker at Investec who specialises in supporting legal leaders and senior lawyers. Here, she tackles the unique financial challenges facing senior legal professionals Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: Ask the private banker to senior lawyers”
Emily Bernstein is an experienced private banker at Investec who specialises in supporting legal leaders and senior lawyers. Here, she tackles the unique financial challenges facing senior legal professionals
‘Currency markets have been volatile and I’ve lost control of my US dollar income. What can I do?’ Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: Ask the private banker to senior lawyers”
Emily Bernstein is an experienced private banker at Investec who specialises in supporting legal leaders and senior lawyers
Q: I earn £1m a year but I can’t get the mortgage I need. What are my options? Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: Ask the private banker to senior lawyers”
Pallas Partners is coordinating proceedings in the Swiss courts on behalf of around 800 Credit Suisse AT1 bondholders who held securities valued at $1.7bn. The bondholders have filed claims against Swiss regulator the Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), alleging that FINMA’s decision to write down the value of the bonds to zero as part of UBS’s acquisition of Credit Suisse should be considered invalid and the value of the bonds reinstated.
Pallas explained in a statement that the first claim was filed on 18 April on behalf of two groups of bondholders: one comprised of ‘over 90 global institutional investors and asset managers’, with holdings valued at $1.35bn, and another of ‘more than 700 retail and family office clients’, with holdings valued at over $300m. Continue reading “Pallas Partners files suits against Swiss regulator over Credit Suisse bond write-down”
Emily Bernstein is an experienced private banker at Investec, who specialises in supporting legal leaders and senior lawyers. Here, she tackles the unique financial challenges facing senior legal professionals
Q: I’m too busy to manage my personal finances. Can private banking help? Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: Ask the private banker to senior lawyers”
After a tense weekend of negotiations, the Bank of England announced on Monday (13 March) that HSBC would buy the UK branch of collapsed US bank Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The acquisition, which was completed for a token amount of £1, prevents SVBUK being put into insolvency.
The Bank of England said in a statement that all depositors’ money with SVBUK is safe and secure as a result of this transaction: ‘SVBUK’s business will continue to be operated normally by SVBUK. All services will continue to operate as normal and customers should not notice any changes.’ Continue reading “‘Crisis averted’: City banking and corporate partners react as HSBC acquires SVB UK”
Money laundering continues to be an issue for both financial services providers and their clients. In particular, money launderers continue to circumvent compliance measures by relocating to less-regulated, often cash-intense sectors. Because money launderers are not bound by parliamentary decision processes, they are able to react faster and exercise more flexibility than those who are responsible for keeping them in check. This goes to show that it is not only helpful but necessary for compliance officers and other diligent actors to be able to empathise with money launderers and how they operate.
At Teichmann International, we believe that in order to be able to effectively prevent money laundering, one needs to look at compliance from the money launderer’s perspective. Money launderers generally avoid methods and industries that fall within the scope of Anti-Money Laundering Acts. Moreover, they frequently split larger amounts of incriminated money to undercut threshold values for cash payments. Particularly well suited are investments in tangible assets because they facilitate placement of incriminated cash by changing the value carrier. Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: Methods of money laundering: Circumventing anti-money laundering mechanisms”
In 2019, our article in Legal Business ended as follows: ‘Therefore, with the benefits of a renewed legal and regulatory framework and of an environment where low interest rates facilitate access to funding, 2020 is likely to follow in line with the current year, promising continued intense activity and diversity’. In January 2020, VdA organised an international conference on sustainable finance, where we discussed the growing relevance of ESG factors with key players.
However, unpredictably, by March 2020 it was clear that our prediction of ‘continued intense activity and diversity’ was beginning to make little or no sense, as the Covid-19 pandemic reached Portugal (and the world). By the end of March, an unprecedented legal moratoria regime was enacted and subsequently extended until the end of September 2021. Very dark clouds were on the horizon for those looking for funding or refinancing, and on top of the legal moratoria regime, force majeure and material adverse change clauses became hot topics of discussion. Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: The pandemic and Portuguese capital markets”
The Paris Climate Agreement, signed in Paris on 12 December 2015, strengthened the call to action among the financial community by setting a new long-term goal on finance: ‘making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development’. Portugal ratified the Paris Agreement in 2016 and has since taken the first steps towards what will hopefully be a robust and appealing green financing market, which has recently shown a more consistent path.
The development of Portugal’s green financing market has been mainly led by banks and big listed companies with sustainability strategies, seeking to obtain or allocate funding while pushing forward with the decarbonisation of the Portuguese economy.
In the corporate sector, EDP – Energias de Portugal has prepared its MTN Debt Programme for the issuance of green bonds, the proceeds of which are being directed to financing or refinancing portfolios of wind and solar energy generation facilities, thus overcoming the first-mover fear that was holding back the Portuguese market.
Earlier this year, mortgage lender Unión de Créditos Inmobiliários, Establecimiento Financiero de Crédito – Sucursal em Portugal entered the universe of European green securitisations by privately placing its inaugural RMBS Green Belém No. 1, a deal having Tagus STC (a Portuguese securitisation vehicle) as issuer and backed by Portuguese residential mortgages originated by UCI Portugal. This was the first ‘green’ RMBS securitisation in the Iberian Peninsula, with UCI Portugal committing to use the proceeds from this deal to fund earmarked green building initiatives and sustainable finance projects in Portugal and Spain. This was also the first securitisation to be labelled ‘STS’ (simple, transparent and standardised) under the Securitisation Regulation in Portugal and the first to be successfully completed within the difficult context of the Covid-19 pandemic, just as states of emergency were being declared in various countries around the world, including Portugal.
Following clear and documented policies for climate action and environmental sustainability, as well as a renewed ambition to establish a trend for investments in this domain, the European Investment Bank subscribed part of the senior class of the issuance. This marked the return of supranational institutions to the Portuguese RMBS market, which will hopefully send a clear message to other potential investors as to the robustness and health of this market.
Sustainalytics, an independent global provider of ESG and corporate governance research and ratings, played a crucial role in both issuances by confirming that each was in compliance with the Green Bonds Principles, a set of voluntary process guidelines established by the International Capital Market Association recommending transparency and disclosures and promoting integrity in the development of the Green Bond market.
Euronext Lisbon – the Portuguese stock exchange and member of the Euronext platform – also launched in 2020 a new suite of ESG-focused products, services and initiatives, designed to provide a robust framework of tools for European capital markets to fuel sustainable growth. Euronext Green Bonds offerings (which included the RMBS Green Belém No.1) saw a 70% increase in the number of issuers since launch and led to Euronext expanding its offering to other ESG-related bonds, including blue, social, sustainability and sustainability-linked bonds.
More recently, a reflection group on sustainable financing was created, being composed of the main players in the Portuguese financial sector and coordinated by the Ministry of Environment and Energy Transition, in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economy. This group launched two important documents ‘Guidelines for Accelerating Sustainable Financing in Portugal’ and ‘Letter of Commitment for Sustainable Financing in Portugal’, which establish guidelines and commitments with respect to sustainable financing, such as the commitment to developing a fiscal policy in favour of sustainability and the signatories’ commitment to promoting training in sustainable financing aimed at their employees at different levels of the organisation (including board level).
September 2020 saw the incorporation of a national green development bank. Banco Português de Fomento springs from the will to streamline the action of financial institutions in support of the economy, by maximising the efficiency of their action and promoting their strategic co-ordination while simultaneously aiming to provide financial capacity and accelerate the various existing sources of financing dedicated to investing in sustainable, carbon neutral and circular economy projects.
2020 has seen the Portuguese financial sector embracing ESG and is on the path to increasing the supply of financial products that promote decarbonisation, while also bringing awareness to sustainability policies and projects among Portuguese SMEs
Benedita Aires
Partner, Banking & Finance
bla@vda.pt
Sebastião Nogueira
Senior Associate, Banking & Finance
san@vda.pt
VdA
T: (+351) 213 113 400
Rua Dom Luís I, 28
1200 151 – Lisboa
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has been dragged into the spotlight yet again for its role in the cum-ex tax scandal, with Germany’s finance minister suggesting that the firm should no longer be handed government contracts for its involvement.
Finance minister Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrat Party made the remark on Wednesday (9 September) at the German Bundestag during questioning around what has widely been dubbed the biggest tax fraud in the country’s history. Continue reading “Freshfields tax drama back in spotlight as Germany’s finance minister throws future mandates into doubt”
