Acquisition and leveraged finance is a fascinating area for lawyers, both inherently and because of its potential for complexity arising out of the requirements of the acquisition process, cross-border issues, regulation and the like. It can also cut across legal disciplines, at times requiring the specialised expertise of merger and acquisition lawyers, bank finance lawyers, securities lawyers, tax lawyers, property lawyers, pension lawyers, intellectual property lawyers and environmental lawyers, among others. An additional area of complexity and interest at the moment comes out of market forces that are driving convergence in the large cap leveraged financings between loan and high-yield bond products generally, as well as between different markets (particularly pressure on markets outside the United States to conform to terms available in the US market but sometimes also vice versa), and increasingly the market is debating whether to adjust for differences in bankruptcy, guarantee or security regimes, and frequently deciding not to.

Originally published in The Acquisition and Leveraged Finance Review, Edition 4