Our Legal Insights Blog

Unrestricted Subsidiaries did not always strike fear in the hearts of lenders. I explain in the first chapter of the Leveraged Finance Covenant Training course that back in my baby lawyer days these entities were fairly benign from a lender-perspective – indeed, they might even bode well for investors.

Finding delta between reality and perception can happen in two ways in credit – either based on the company’s performance and prospects, or based on the borrower’s ability to take actions under the covenants.

We spent a lot of time thinking about how to bring that level of understanding to a virtual classroom. Education technology has come along way over the past few years, so we chose an online learning platform that supports engagement with complex course material through case studies and quizzes and facilitates interaction with me and amongst the students themselves.

I ask students at the start of the LFCT course to forget everything they know about covenants. In a market that has become overly reliant on “precedent”, turning out deal after deal with cookie cutter covenants, this is an essential first step. Let me explain why.

As we enter a new year, I have been reflecting on a question I’m sometimes asked: if wide covenant flexibility is now the norm in the leveraged finance market, does understanding them really matter?

Leveraged finance investors face a tough task when analysing modern covenant packages, and nothing illustrates this better than the disappearance of just two words from the Restricted Payments covenant.

We are beyond excited to be officially launching the world's first online covenant training platform this evening at our Festive Launch party.

I still remember my first assignment as a young corporate associate. Take this giant stack of documents, circle the numbers and put them in a table. My very first comp table. This would be used to draft the first set of covenants