Insights

New York – March 4, 2022: Crowell & Moring’s Jennifer K. Grady, Richard J. Lee, and John A. Clark have authored a chapter in the recently published second edition of The Handbook of Loan Syndications and Trading. According to the book’s publisher, the Loan Syndications and Trading Association, “The Handbook covers all aspects of the primary and secondary loan markets, ESG, direct lending, and so much more.”

Washington – January 3, 2022: Crowell & Moring elected 13 lawyers to the firm’s partnership, effective January 1, 2022. The firm also promoted seven to the position of senior counsel and 19 associates to the position of counsel. The new partners have been promoted from within the ranks of the firm’s London, New York, and Washington, D.C. offices and from across several practice groups, including Advertising & Media; Antitrust & Competition; Corporate; Energy; Environment & Natural Resources; Government Contracts; Health Care; Technology & Intellectual Property; International Dispute Resolution; Litigation; Mass Tort, Product, and Consumer Litigation; and Privacy & Cybersecurity.

New York – April 1, 2021: Crowell & Moring and Kibbe & Orbe have joined forces effective today to provide expanded service offerings to clients in the financial services industry.  Twenty-four lawyers from the storied financial law firm are now part of Crowell & Moring’s New York, London, and Washington, D.C. offices, including Jennifer Grady, managing partner and chair of the firm’s executive committee, who will co-chair Crowell & Moring’s Corporate practice; three founding partners, Jonathan Kibbe, William Orbe, and Michael D. Mann, and the managing partner of the London office, Andrew M. Martin.

After nearly 13 years since its original proposal, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted Rule 9j-1, a set of anti-fraud and anti-market manipulation prohibitions specifically designed for policing misconduct in security-based swap markets.[1]

Participation agreements, in the form promulgated by The Loan Syndications and Trading Association, Inc. (LSTA), are widely regarded as dependable vehicles for conveying loan ownership interests from a lender to a participant as “true sales” in the United States.  But what if the underlying credit agreement describes the participation as a financing relationship between a lender, as debtor, and participant, as creditor?  The answer is unclear as a legal matter, and the existence of such language should give market participants pause if encountered in the loan origination or secondary trading contexts.

On March 5, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority announced the dates on which USD and other LIBOR settings will cease to be published, officially marking the long-anticipated beginning of the end of a multi-year process to terminate LIBOR and transition markets to new benchmark rates.