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Katie Duffield

Partner

Contact
CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP
Cannon Place
78 Cannon Street
London
EC4N 6AF
United Kingdom
Languages English

Katie Duffield is a partner in the Infrastructure and Project Finance group in Banking and Finance Department at CMS London. Katie acts for financial institutions, borrowers and sponsors, advising on a wide variety of structured, project and corporate finance transactions, primarily in the infrastructure, transport, energy and climate change sectors.  Katie was named as a Next Generation Partner for Infrastructure in 2019's Legal 500.

Katie has been with the firm since 2003 and has over 15 years’ experience. She has delivered financing and restructuring solutions involving bank debt, bond issues (public and private placements), mezzanine financings, holdco financings and portfolio financings.

Katie is an active member of the CMS Women network.

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Relevant experience

Infrastructure:

  • Institutional investor noteholders, including Aviva and Sun Life, in relation to financings of rolling stock for the West Coast Partnership rail franchise and the East Midlands rail franchise.
  • Société Générale as agent in connection with major capacity upgrade works and amendments to the C$1.8bn Canada Line light rail project between Vancouver, its airport and Richmond in British Columbia, Canada.
  • Senior Creditors, including Aviva, LGIM, Scottish Widows, MetLife, MEAG, Rothesay, Barings, Mass Mutual and Aberdeen Standard in relation to the financing of rolling stock for the South Western rail franchise
  • Institutional investor noteholders, including Aviva, LGIM and Aberdeen Standard, and EIB in relation to the financing of rolling stock for the East Anglia rail franchise.
  • Aviva in relation to long term fixed rate financing of rolling stock to be run on the Moorgate branch of the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern rail franchise.
  • Aviva and EIB, in relation to the £300m financing of the Dumfries & Galloway Acute Services Redevelopment Project.
  • Laing O’Rourke on the Yorkshire Batch Priority Schools Building Programme PF2 financed and secured through the “aggregator vehicle” model.
  • The Intercreditor Agent, the monoline insurer in respect of the project bonds and RPI swaps and other lenders to NATS Limited in relation to the National Air Traffic Services Project on an ongoing basis since 2005.
  • Aviva in relation to investments in ITS Technology Group, County Broadband and Truespeed Communications to fund the roll out of ultrafast fibre-optic infrastructure networks across the UK.
  • Aspire Defence Limited as the project company in relation to various amendments, variations and consents required in connection with the project financing for the MOD Allenby & Connaught accommodation and associated support services project.

Energy:

  • Advising a renewable energy fund in relation to the portfolio financing of its operational solar assets.
  • AIB, IFM and Aviva in relation to financing of a portfolio of anaerobic digestion plants for Pretoria Energy.
  • National Grid in relation to financing, security and support arrangements in connection with transmission link and electricity interconnector projects.
  • BP in relation to financing, security and support arrangements in connection with disposals of North Sea assets.
  • The lenders to and investors in Aldwych International, a specialised developer of power projects in Africa, on the restructuring of its debt facilities

Corporate Finance:

  • Hunting plc, Savills plc and various other borrower clients in relation to their group working capital facilities often involving guarantee and fx facilities, overdraft facilities and bonding lines.
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Memberships & Roles

  • Member of the Law Society.
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Education

  • 2003 – Legal Practice Course, Nottingham Law School, Nottingham.
  • 2001 – Law LL.B (Hons), University of Manchester, Manchester.
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Feed

29/09/2022
CMS closes series of high-profile battery storage deals
International law firm CMS has closed five significant battery storage deals in recent months, reinforcing the firm’s market-leading position in this space.  These in­clude: Ad­vising Zenobē on two...
26/09/2022
CMS advises River and Mercantile (R&M) on £155m investment in Spring Fibre
International law firm CMS has advised specialist investment management company River and Mercantile on its £155-million investment in wholesale fibre operator Spring Fibre. Well known as a provider...
26/07/2021
UK transport decarbonisation strategy– impact for rail sector
On 14 July 2021, the UK Department for Transport (“DfT”) published a wide-reaching policy plan on decarbonising transport and the targets and ambitions required to meet the UK’s net-zero targets...
21/05/2021
The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail confirms the end of rail franchising...
The long awaited white paper following the Williams review of British railways was published yesterday (20 May 2021). The white paper proposes the end of the franchising model and a significant overhaul...
07/12/2020
Top 5 take aways from recent fibre roll out financing transactions
The last three years have seen a large amount of activity in the telecoms infrastructure market in the UK, boosted by the rise and energy of alternative network providers (the “altnets”). However...
13/03/2020
COVID-19: Challenges for the supply of new rolling stock for the Rail Industry
Although the rail industry is not yet showing the same vulnerability to falling passenger numbers due to COVID-19 as that being experienced by market participants in the airline industry, with over half...
02/04/2019
Financing InfraTech
In the ‘Future Telecoms Infrastructure Re­view’, pub­lished by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport in July 2018, it was estimated that around GBP 30bn of funding would be required...
21/01/2019
CMS advises group of lenders on £120m AD refinancing
International law firm CMS has advised a group of lenders led by Allied Irish Bank (GB) (“AIB”) as Agent and Structuring Bank on the £120m refinancing of two biomethane an­aer­obic-di­ges­tion (AD) facilities...
23/03/2018
Communications infrastructure finance: catching up to the speed of connectivity
Earlier this week, bidding began in the UK for a share of newly released spectrum to provide the backbone for the next generation of network and data connectivity, 5G services. With the usual suspects...