Loan Syndications Advisory
We are engaged by borrowers — founders, families, and corporates — to structure, arrange and negotiate credit facilities with Nigerian and international lenders.
A credit committee reviews facilities every week. A mid-market borrower negotiates one every four or five years, usually under time pressure, usually with the relationship manager of the bank it already uses. The terms that result are not the terms available in the market. They are the terms offered to a party with no comparison and no alternative. Most of the cost of a facility is settled in its structure — tenor, amortisation, security, covenant headroom — and structure is agreed before pricing is discussed.
What we do
We establish what the business can service, rather than what the company has asked for. Debt capacity is tested against cash generation under adverse conditions, because a facility that survives only the base case has transferred risk to the borrower without either party having priced it.
We design the structure. Tenor and amortisation profile against the asset being financed, security package, covenant package and the headroom within it, and the conditions that will govern the facility for its life.
We prepare the information memorandum and supporting materials to a standard that survives a credit committee rather than a relationship meeting. Weak lender materials are not a presentational failure; they are priced.
We construct the lender universe. Nigerian commercial and merchant banks, development finance institutions, offshore lenders with existing Nigerian appetite, and non-bank credit providers. A borrower who approaches one lender has no process. A borrower who approaches the market has one.
We run the approach in parallel, hold competitive tension through credit approval, and negotiate the term sheet on the borrower's behalf.
We manage documentation, conditions precedent and drawdown alongside the client's counsel through to first utilisation.
What we do not do
We hold no capital. We do not lend. We do not underwrite, guarantee, or take participation in any facility we arrange. We do not act as facility agent or security trustee, and we do not receive or hold client or lender funds at any point.
We accept no fee, commission or other consideration from a lender. We are paid by the borrower and act for the borrower alone. We do not provide legal or tax advice, and we will tell a client plainly when a question has moved outside our competence.
How a process runs
Three to six months, in four phases: capacity assessment and structure; lender approach and information release; term sheet negotiation and credit approval; documentation and drawdown. The client receives a written report at each phase boundary setting out what has been established, what has changed, and what decision is now required.
Where a refinancing carries a fixed maturity, we work backwards from it. A process compressed into the final weeks before repayment falls due has no leverage, and the lender knows it.
When borrowers call us
A facility approaching maturity with no alternative prepared. Acquisition financing, where the quantum exceeds what a single relationship bank will hold.
Capital expenditure beyond what retained earnings will fund. Working capital under foreign exchange pressure, where naira revenue services a dollar obligation.
Short-term facilities repeatedly rolled to fund long-term assets. A covenant that is about to be breached, where the position is better disclosed early than discovered late.
A single lender relationship that has become the only relationship.