Home / People / Benoît Vandervelde
Portrait of Benoît Vandervelde

Benoît Vandervelde

Partner

CMS DeBacker
Chaussée de La Hulpe 178
1170 Brussels
Belgium
Languages French, Dutch, English

Benoît specializes in banking and finance law as well as in regulatory insurance law. He mainly advises lenders and borrowers on financial transactions, including acquisition finance, syndicated loans, real estate finance, debt restructuring, etc.
Benoît also advises financial institutions (banks, investment funds, investment firms, insurance undertakings, pension funds, payment institutions) and public authorities, both in the performance of their day-to-day activities (securitization, capital market transactions, investment products, liability of financial institutions) and in their relationships with the regulatory authorities (licensing, prudential requirements, merger and acquisition).

He is regularly consulted by regulated entities on regulatory compliance matters. Benoît also developed an in-depth knowledge in advising insurance undertakings with their operations in Belgium in the context of Brexit.

He was seconded to the banking and finance team of CMS London.

Benoît is praised for being "really pragmatic," adding that "he understands immediately what clients need and helps out straight away." He has been mentioned as “up and coming” in Chambers [2019].

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"Benoît Vandervelde is praised by one client for his "strength not only in the legal regulatory aspect, but also in a commercial and practical sense." The same client also appreciates that he "makes sure things are completed on time." He has a wide range of expertise, assisting borrowers with financing issues, as well as advising public sector clients on COVID-19 support measures. He also acts for financial institutions on regulatory matters."

Chambers Global, 2022

"Benoît Vandervelde is a very efficient and pleasant partner with great know-how in legal finance matters allowing a great work for our bank."

Feedback from a client, Legal 500, 2022

"Benoit knows about the business and its needs. He is very pragmatic in his approach."

Feedback from a client, Legal 500, 2022

"Benoît Vandervelde is an excellent finance lawyer. Benoit is very competent and knowledgeable. He is responsive and adds value by giving succinct legal advice with a keen commercial view."

Feedback from a client, Legal 500, 2022

"Benoit Vandervelde is hands on and thus provides advice which can be applied by companies."

Feedback from a client, Legal 500, 2022

"Benoit Vandervelde is easy to reach, giving short to the point advice and pleasant to work with."

Feedback from a client, Legal 500, 2022

"Benoît Vandervelde is a very efficient and pleasant partner with excellent know-how in real estate matters."

Feedback from a client, Legal 500, 2022

"Benoît Vandervelde is extremely knowledgeable, responsive and collaborative. He takes time to explain complex issues and breaks them down in a way that makes it easy to digest and share with internal stakeholders. We have found him to be extremely helpful on a number of key issues relating to our Belgian entity and European business activities."

Feedback from a client, Legal 500, 2022

Relevant experience

  • Regularly acting for lenders or borrowers on cross-border LMA transactions, i.e. drafting and negotiating LMA credit facility, intercreditor agreement and security documentation (upstream guarantee with limitation wording, business pledge, receivables pledge, bank account pledge, shares pledge, etc.), including the issuance of legal opinions
  • Advising several UK insurance intermediaries in the development of their Brexit plan and the implementation thereof, i.e. assisting with the application for license with the FSMA
  • Advising Aedifica with a debt capital market transaction (€150 Mio treasury note program) arranged by Belfius Bank and BNP Paribas Fortis. The program was structured as a mix of short term and medium-term treasury notes
  • Advising a Belgian Fintech acting as liquidity provider for cryptocurrencies market. We assisted the Fintech in the drafting and negotiation of several cryptocurrencies loan agreement, taking into account the specificities and features of this new category of currency (escrow wallet, smart contract, etc)
  • Assisting one of the largest private banking institution of Switzerland in the setting up and marketing of a platform centralizing offering to 100,000 different investment funds, to be used by professional investors and local distributors around the world, for their own purpose or for the purpose of repackaging in fund of funds or unit linked policies. Our assistance related to complex investment services (MIFID) advice interrelated to alternative investment funds regulations
  • Advising a Belgian Bank during four separate securitization programmes arranged for two of the largest steel groups worldwide (EUR 150,000,000 and EUR 140,000,000), a worldwide cement group (EUR 250,000,000) and a worldwide group of maritime container transporters (EUR 51,000,000)
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Publications

  • B. VANDERVELDE & V. DIRCKX, « Equity line transactions : une nouvelle technique de financement pour les sociétés cotées ? », Droit Bancaire et Financier, 2015/III, p.187
  • B. VANDERVELDE, « Fusions de banques et cessions d’activités bancaires », in 20 ans de Loi bancaire, Anthémis, 2013
  • B. VANDERVELDE & G. CHUFFART, Pensions complémentaires, (aspects réglementaires et assurance-vie)  Salaires, Kluwer, 2011, 106 pages
  • B. VANDERVELDE, « L’offre conjointe et les services financiers », in La nouvelle loi relative aux pratiques du marché et à la protection du consommateur : tout sur l’ancien et le nouveau régime, Larcier, 2010
  • B. VANDERVELDE & A. VAN OEKEL, « La conversion de dette en capital : un remède dans le cadre des restructurations de crédit », Forum Financier/Droit bancaire et financier, 2009/06
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Education

  • 2004 - Bar admission (Brussels, Belgium)
  • 2004 - University of Louvain, UC Louvain (Law Degree)
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18/12/2017
10 ques­tions about the new Bel­gian se­cur­ity in­terests re­gime
The re­form of the leg­al frame­work of se­cur­ity in­terests over mov­able as­sets was seen as long over­due. The trans­ition from the pre­vi­ous sys­tem, based on the dis­pos­ses­sion of the pledged as­sets, to a new...
13/06/2018
CMS in­tro­duces Private Place­ments on­line Ques­tion­naire
Private place­ments are in­creas­ingly be­ing used for debt fund­ing as an al­tern­at­ive to bank fin­an­cing Find the right one for you! The mar­ket of­fers a large num­ber of Private Place­ment (PP) products...

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17/03/2023
Bel­gi­um levels re­strict­ive con­di­tions on the com­mer­cial­isa­tion of vir­tu­al...
As a res­ult of a new reg­u­la­tion, any ad­vert­ise­ment com­mer­cial­ising vir­tu­al coins in Bel­gi­um and dis­trib­uted to con­sumers must take in­to ac­count a num­ber of ob­lig­a­tions con­sist­ing of both sub­stant­ive rules...
22/02/2023
Wal­loon Re­gion: CMS Bel­gi­um ad­vises the joint lead man­agers on a new EUR...
CMS Bel­gi­um ad­vised ABN AMRO, Deutsche Bank, ING, Natix­is, Nomura and NordLB, as joint lead man­agers, on a new EUR 1.5 bil­lion bond is­sue by the Wal­loon Re­gion un­der its EUR 25 bil­lion EMTN pro­gramme...
21/02/2023
New de­vel­op­ments in the concept of “cor­por­ate sub­stance” in the in­sur­ance...
On 3 Feb­ru­ary, the European In­sur­ance and Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Pen­sions Au­thor­ity (EIOPA) is­sued a pruden­tial state­ment for in­sur­ance un­der­tak­ings and in­sur­ance in­ter­me­di­ar­ies gov­erned by the law of an EU Mem­ber...
27/12/2022
CMS Ex­pert Guide to UCITS pass­port­ing
In­form­a­tion provided as of 1 Decem­ber 2022The UCITS Dir­ect­ive was es­tab­lished to har­mon­ise re­tail col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes in the EU through the in­tro­duc­tion of a com­mon in­vest­ment vehicle known...
06/12/2022
CMS as­sisted Quantessence in ob­tain­ing reg­u­lat­ory ap­prov­al in Bel­gi­um
CMS Bel­gi­um, CMS UK, CMS Prague and CMS France as­sisted lead­ing fin­an­cial tech­no­logy plat­form, Quantessence, in re­lo­cat­ing and ob­tain­ing reg­u­lat­ory ap­prov­al as a Mi­FID in­vest­ment firm in Bel­gi­um, al­low­ing...
01/12/2022
Pop­u­lar in­vest­ment vehicles in Bel­gi­um
Up­dated on May 2022 In­vest­ment vehicle FIIS (Fonds d’in­ves­t­isse­ment im­mob­iliers spé­cial­isés) 1. Form In­vest­ment un­der­tak­ing with fixed cap­it­al (SI­CAF) 2. Tax Treat­ment Derog­at­ory tax re­gime (as re­gards...
Comparable
23/11/2022
Bel­gi­um reg­u­lates the mar­ket­ing of in­sur­ance policies for the pur­chase...
The Fin­an­cial Ser­vices and Mar­kets Au­thor­ity (FSMA) im­poses (via a Reg­u­la­tion) re­strict­ive con­di­tions on the com­mer­cial­isa­tion, vis-à-vis con­sumers, of cer­tain in­sur­ance con­tracts on mul­ti­me­dia devices...
10/11/2022
In­sur­ance dis­trib­ut­or li­cence im­posed by European Court of Justice on poli­cy­hold­ers...
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) re­cently ruled that an en­tity act­ing as group poli­cy­hold­er un­der a col­lect­ive in­sur­ance policy and of­fer­ing op­tion­al mem­ber­ship to cus­tom­ers falls un­der the scope of...
18/10/2022
Tech­no­logy Trans­form­a­tion – Fin­an­cial Ser­vices
The Fin­an­cial Ser­vices (FS) sec­tor is a lead­er in pro­tect­ing its tech in­fra­struc­ture, re­flect­ing the high de­gree of scru­tiny from reg­u­lat­ors. FS firms are at a tip­ping point, with large in­cum­bents ey­ing smal­ler firms and fintechs for their IP and skills to re­main com­pet­it­ive while con­sid­er­ing up­grades to leg­acy sys­tems. Sim­ul­tan­eously, reg­u­la­tion is chan­ging to re­flect new and emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies and threats.This re­port is a deep dive in­to data first pro­duced for the re­port Tech­no­logy Trans­form­a­tion: Man­aging Risks in a Chan­ging Land­scape. This saw over 500 people sur­veyed from mul­tiple in­dus­tries across the world. Here we look in de­tail at the 85 re­spond­ents from the FS sec­tor, and their per­spect­ives on the risks as­so­ci­ated with busi­ness-crit­ic­al tech­no­lo­gies, in­clud­ing emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies. This sec­tor is more highly reg­u­lated than most of the oth­er sec­tors sur­veyed, with many his­tor­ic­al tech dis­putes re­lat­ing to reg­u­la­tion. But the fo­cus of reg­u­la­tion is shift­ing, and so are the risks af­fect­ing this sec­tor.Down­load the Tech­no­logy Trans­form­a­tion Fin­an­cial Ser­vices re­port now to read about:Drivers of tech­no­logy ad­op­tion in the fin­an­cial ser­vices sec­torNew risks emer­ging and tra­di­tion­al bar­ri­ers to risk man­age­ment­Cur­rent tech­no­logy risks in the fin­an­cial ser­vices sec­tor­Fu­ture risks, in­clud­ing AI and crypto­cur­ren­cies, and meas­ures to deal with themPre­ferred ap­proaches to tech­no­logy dis­pute res­ol­u­tion for the fin­an­cial ser­vices sec­tor
10/10/2022
CMS as­sists in the set-up of the so­cial im­pact in­vest­ment fund Im­pak­tEU
CMS Bel­gi­um as­sisted the as­set man­age­ment com­pany, In­pulse In­vest­ment Man­ager in set­ting up a so­cial im­pact in­vest­ment fund, Im­pak­tEU, to­geth­er with its part­ner, Funds For Good. Start­ing with nearly EUR...
07/10/2022
CMS Bel­gi­um as­sisted the lenders in the ac­quis­i­tion of the Brus­sels of­fice...
CMS Bel­gi­um ad­vised the lenders on the ac­quis­i­tion of the Egmont of­fice com­plex in Brus­sels by Uni­on Ban­caire Privée (UBP, Geneva) from its Korean own­ers. Egmont is loc­ated in the heart of Brus­sels and...
20/09/2022
Wal­loon Re­gion: CMS Bel­gi­um as­sists the joint lead man­agers on a new EUR...
CMS Bel­gi­um ad­vised Belfi­us, HS­BC, Natix­is, Nomura and Nord/LB, as joint lead man­agers, on a new EUR 1 bil­lion bond is­sue by the Wal­loon Re­gion un­der its EUR 25 bil­lion EMTN pro­gramme. The bonds have...