Keith Loke
Keith Loke is complex banking and finance partner at HWL Ebsworth. He leads the firm’s national energy, resources, transport and infrastructure finance practices.
Keith specialises in structured financing and funding. He has substantial experience and particular expertise in bespoke public finance, project finance, real estate finance, corporate finance, trade and asset finance, acquisition finance, and debt restructuring. He has advised on some of the most groundbreaking and intricate financings and workouts in the market. His longstanding clients include governments, global banks, investment funds, and major multinational and domestic corporations.
Keith delivers tailored advice and solutions to senior and subordinated lenders, sponsors and borrowers on large-scale financing, funding, refinancing and restructuring transactions, often featuring novel cross-border multi-tiered multi-sourced debt and equity funding structures. He is adept at guiding clients through complicated intercreditor, security, government co-funding, multipartite and other commercial arrangements.
Keith has deep and unique experience advising governments on their most complex public financing and funding matters. He also advises global banks and investment funds on highly sensitive multidisciplinary strategic legal matters.
Keith sits on the Australian project finance committee of the Asia Pacific Loan Market Association (APLMA).
Experience
Keith’s market-leading experience includes advising:
- MyState Bank on the financing, regulatory capital, securitisation, hedging and capital integration aspects of its proposed $12.5 billion merger with Auswide Bank;
- Project company WICET on the syndicated project financing, development and restructuring of the $4.3 billion Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal in Gladstone, Queensland;
- Sponsor General Electric and project company WRC on the syndicated project financing, development and restructuring of the $1.2 billion Worsley Multi-Fuel Cogen Power Station in Worsley, Western Australia;
- Sponsors Masdar, John Laing, Hitachi Zosen Inova and Tribe Infrastructure on the syndicated project financing of the $511 million Waste-to-Energy Resource Recovery Facility in East Rockingham, Western Australia;
- International banks, led by Société Générale, on the syndicated project financings of the Langer Heinrich Uranium Mine in Erongo, Namibia and the Kayelekera Uranium Mine near Karonga, Malawi;
- The New South Wales Government, the Queensland Government and the Tasmanian Government on the financing, securities and complex multipartite aspects of various large-scale long-term structured essential services arrangements involving the acquisition and supply of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft;
- The New South Wales Government and the Australian Capital Territory Government on their procurement of whole-of-government transactional banking and payment services;
- The New South Wales Government on the validity of digital guarantees and related banking law issues associated with its whole-of-government Digital Bank Guarantees platform;
- JPMorgan on its financing of Sankaty’s $1.9 billion acquisition of General Electric’s Australian commercial lending businesses;
- International banks on the financing aspects of a private equity bid to acquire Lattice, the $1.6 billion oil and gas business of Origin Energy;
- An international bank on its New York capital call facility to a USD1.5 billion investment fund affiliated with a globally significant sovereign pension fund;
- Trafigura on its structured cross-border USD520 million trade finance facility from a global bank;
- Trafigura on the novel and complex structured secured prepayment financing of its acquisition of Australian carbon credit units from a leading Australian multi-sector developer;
- Various real estate debt funds on their structured Australian real estate finance facilities and associated debt restructures;
- Various international banks on their structured Australian and New Zealand corporate finance facilities to Volvo, Leaseplan, Graphic Packaging International, Ball & Doggett, Wilmar Trading, Louis Dreyfus, CIMIC, SUEZ, Yamaha, Holcim, Bradken and Optus; and
- Attura, Newcastle Airport, Associated British Foods, George Weston Foods, Metcash, Boral, Fiji Airways, Capsifi, Office Choice, AMCI Group, ELMO, Oldfields, CarBiz and Landfill Gas Industries on their structured Australian corporate finance facilities and other financing, securities and leasing matters.