White & Case advises LSF on inaugural US$100 million repo transaction announced at COP27

Global law firm White & Case LLP has provided pro bono advice to the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility (LSF) on its inaugural US$100 million repo transaction with Afreximbank and Citi, which was announced at COP27 and aims to bring liquidity to a diversified basket of African sovereign Eurobonds.

"For the LSF, an innovative and scalable legal program has been established," said White & Case partner Ingrid York, who led the Firm's team advising the LSF on the deal. "The platform will help African sovereigns access international markets efficiently and for the long term. Our team included more than 40 lawyers based in nine of our global offices who provided advice on a variety of aspects including structured finance, financial services regulatory, tax, corporate, employment, technology, intellectual property and data."

The LSF, designed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN ECA) with support from African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), announced the transaction at COP 27. The innovative deal, with funding support from Afreximbank, seeks to bring the benefits of a well-developed repo market to the African continent, with the goal of enhancing the liquidity of a diversified basket of sovereign Eurobonds including The Arab Republic of Egypt, Kenya and Angola as issuers. It relies on an innovative triparty platform designed for the LSF by BNY Mellon. The LSF is now in the process of signing-in clients to the platform, including potentially two of the largest American and European fixed income private investors. 

This first transaction marks the full operationalization of the LSF's business model, enabling it to start fulfilling its two objectives of supporting the liquidity of African sovereign Eurobonds, and incentivizing SDG-related investments such as SDG and green bonds on the African continent.

The White & Case team which advised on the transaction included partners Ingrid York, Jonathan Rogers, Will Smith, Robert Nield, James Hardy, Anthony Colegrave, Nicholas Greenacre, Tim Hickman, Tom Falkus, Helen Joseph, Edward Attenborough (all London), Mara Topping (Washington, DC), Alexandra Ippolito (Paris), Debashis Dey (Dubai & London), Steven Gee (New York), Valérie Ménard (Paris) and Philip Trillmich (London & Frankfurt), counsel Nate Crowley (Hong Kong) and Willem Van de Wiele (Brussels & Luxembourg), and associates Phillan Amin, Ben Cheng, Sylvia Julius, Prema Govind, Ece Kuregibuyuk, Daniella van Wyk, Yannis Lagdani, Kristen DiLemmo, Mark Smith, Thomas Harper, Shehnai Arora, Alec Buchanan, Victor Pierre, Harriet Baldwin (all London), Alexander Reid, Michael Iloegbunam (both New York), Allaa Mageid, Da Young Kim (both Washington, DC), Thibault Faivre-Pierret and Anaïs Caspar (both Paris).

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