Publications

Azure Kingfisher has published a range of books on financial law. These are listed below. Excerpts from these books are provided. The focus is primarily on structured finance. A comprehensive book on financial law in emerging markets is under development.

Sustainable Finance Law & Practice (in prepraration)

Sustainable Finance – poverty and climate change are the challenge of a generation. This new book covers the development of sustainable finance from a legal perspective, detailing the progress as well as the challenges across areas such as sustainable lending, green bonds, impact investing and litigation in ESG and climate change. Watch this space.

Structured Finance, on from the Credit Crunch: the Road to recovery

Structured Finance, on from the Credit Crunch: the Road to Recovery (International Banking and Finance Law Series)

In the wake of the credit crunch, structured finance is linked to bailed-out investment banks and overpaid executives rather than the innovative financial solutions it continues to provide. The initial response from the financial markets was a move back to basics, to plain vanilla transactions.

Furthermore, many structured finance instruments, such as securitization, derivatives and other structured products, are facing intense regulatory and political scrutiny. These pressures notwithstanding, the potential of structured finance will play an important part in facilitating the road to recovery. This book explains why.

This book serves three purposes.

  • First it continues the analysis of structured finance, and in this sense complements and updates the popular and highly acclaimed first edition of this series ( Securitization Law and Practice in the Face of the Credit Crunch), with plenty of focus on derivatives.
  • Second, the key milestones of the credit crunch are discussed with a focus on their potential impact for the expected flow of litigation by aggrieved investors against the perceived deep pockets of arrangers and rating agencies around the world.
  • The third purpose is to illustrate ways in which the untapped potential of structured finance may well facilitate the road to recovery.

Buy at Amazon or Kluwer.

Securitization Law & Practise in the face of the Credit Crunch

Securitization Law and Practice in the Face of the Credit Crunch (International Banking & Finance Law Series)

Securitization once a fairly straightforward means of offering collateral for investment has mushroomed into a massively complex area of financial practice. The central role occupied by such risk-distributing products as collateral debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps (CDSs), collateral loan obligations (CLOs), and credit derivatives has given rise to one of the most crucial inquiries of our era: Is the financial collapse that threatens the world financial system due merely to rogue traders? Or is there something in the derivative idea itself that spells inevitable disaster? Most important, can we isolate the truly productive aspects of securitization and learn to recognise pitfalls in advance? As always in such ideational minefields, it is the legal practitioners who are expected to provide guidance to distressed investors and asset dealers. Hence this vital new book.Written from a distinctly practical point of view by Jan Job de Vries Robbe with contributions from Paul Ali and Tim Coyne all three leading authorities with extensive experience as counsel both in-house and in private practice, in addition to sterling academic credentials the book sheds clear light on every aspect of today s securitization techniques, including welcome guidance on the following:keeping track of exposure to the CDO market; andevaluating such emerging asset classes as commodity risk, microfinance, and project finance risk.In the course of the analysis the book proceeds from the relevant framework and guiding legal principles, through key risks and building blocks in securitization transactions, to the various product classes and sub-classes and their differences and common denominators. Non-credit risk and niche products (such as fund and insurance securitization) are also covered. The final chapters are devoted to the applicable rules as laid down in Basel II and International Financial Reporting Standards.Securitization Law and Practice introduces order, clarity, and renewed confidence into a troubled area of the law. Its combination of sound information, insightful knowledge, and practical wisdom will make it a highly valuable resource for lawyers and students in an indispensable field of international practice.

Buy at Amazon or Kluwer.

Expansion and Diversification in Securitisation, Yearbook 2007

This book depicts the securitisation market at the height of the bubble, just before the credit crunch hit.

The contributions in this volume elucidate both ‘synthetic securitization’ (which involves the investors in exposure-based securities to particular risks in exchange for a fee) and conventional securitization (issuance of securities for the primary purpose of raising funds for the originator or owner of the assets being securitized). The various contributions illustrate how the structures employed in securitizations are readily capable of being applied to a wide range of income-generating assets, including such innovative asset classes as the following:

• commercial mortgages
• student rents
• intellectual property rights
• carbon emission allowances
• life insurance policies
• project and infrastructure loans
• microfinance loans
• sovereign aid grants
• non-performing loans
• loans to finance corporate takeovers
• tax receivables and other public sector assets

In addition, this volume covers the emergence of new markets for securitization in Asia, Latin America, Islamic countries, and South Africa, as well as major developments in the accounting treatment of securitizations and evolving judicial attitudes to the underlying sale and credit derivative components of securitizations.

Innovations in Securitizations, Yearbook 2006

This book gives a great insight in the expansion of the securitisation market in the lead up to the credit crunch. Dig down into complex structures, understand market practice and learn from the past!

Despite fears that regulators around the world would act to curtail securitisation severely in the aftermath of the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat, the securitisation industry has witnessed what can only be described as relentless innovation. Securisation remains one of the most important means for financial institutions to diversify their funding, transfer credit risk and manage solvency requirements. This volume, the second in a series focusing on the latest innovations in the global securitisation industry, provides advisers with detailed guidance on key structural and legal issues of innovative securitisations, as well as describing the most recent developments in the accounting and risk-capital treatment of securitisation transactions. The contributors represent a wide range of expert participants in the design, execution, and regulation of securitisation transactions.

Among the critical features of contemporary securitisation covered are the following:

  • project finance CLOs;
  • securitisation of equity risk ;
  • securitisation of commodity risk through commodity trigger swaps;
  • the convergence of structured credit and securitisation markets;
  • innovation in RMBS: negative equity transactions;
  • innovation in CMBS: A/B structure
  • new markets in Europe, Japan, and Islamic countries;
  • catastrophe risk securitisation;
  • effect of recent US bankruptcy legislation on synthetics;
  • microfinance loan securitisation in emerging markets;
  • public sector securitisation;
  • securitisable intellectual property;
  • application of accounting standards in a rapidly changing environment, and updated analysis of Basel II.

The practical perspective of the contributions, combined with the extensive use of case studies of key transactions, should make this volume an invaluable resource for lawyers as well as legal and business academics interested in the very latest developments in the global securitisation markets.

Securitization of Derivates and Alternative Asset Classes, Yearbook 2005

The initial yearbook from the three sequels describing the rise of the securitisation market globally.

Securitisation has survived the threats that emerged in the aftermath of the collapses of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat. Today, global securitisation markets continue to go from strength to strength, particularly as regards the evolution of new synthetic structures and the application of securitisation technology to fresh asset classes.

This Yearbook focuses on the latest innovations in securitisation, including the securitisation of derivatives and alternative asset classes, and also exotic variations on the securitisation of well-established asset classes. Twenty-nine distinguished authors all of them active in the global securitisation markets as advisers, structurers, facilitators, or regulators brilliantly elucidate such topics as the following:

  • synthetic squares as an effective means of arbitrage securitisation;
  • collateralised debt obligations from a ratings perspective;
  • use of, and potential for, synthetic securitisation in Germany and Italy;
  • weather derivatives;
  • use of equity derivatives as alternatives to credit risk;
  • securitisation of alternative asset classes in Japan and the United States;
  • covered bonds in a variety of European jurisdictions;
  • new types of commercial mortgage backed securities;
  • securitisation of non-performing tax receivables as an example of public sector securitisation; and
  • securitisation structures in the Islamic regulatory and legal framework.

The complex and sometimes controversial issues of documentation are well covered, as are all significant legal and regulatory issues. Three concluding essays detail the recent changes in accountancy fuelled by perceived abuse of existing regulations, and the revised framework for capital adequacy formulated by the Basel Committee.

The Yearbook provides detailed information on the legal structure of innovative securitisations as well as recent developments in the accounting and regulatory treatment of securitisations. For legal advisers, investors, and regulators, there is no more useful guide to current and emerging trends and opportunities in securitisation.

Link through to the detailed table of contents.

The chapter on synthetic squared transactions (which later have become more infamously known as synthetic CDO squareds) is also attached.