Richard Hanson is a partner in Cadwalader’s Capital Markets and Leveraged Finance & Private Credit practices.
Rick advises alternative investment funds, asset managers, insurance companies and banks on structured finance, securitization, and bespoke finance solutions in a wide range of alternative and illiquid asset classes. He has experience with funding structures backed directly and indirectly by commercial real estate (CRE) debt, private credit, distressed/non-performing and re-performing debt, and other illiquid and esoteric cash-flow producing asset classes. Rick advises on all types of private structured credit solutions for asset managers, with experience in CRE back leverage in the form of loan-on-loan, repurchase facilities, repack-to-repo programs, private securitizations, and derivatives-based financings, as well as warehouse lending and the acquisition and financing of loan portfolios using securitization and structured lending techniques.
In the fund finance space, Rick has advised on a number of rated note feeder and rated note fund transactions, both for insurance company investors and private credit fund sponsors. Rick handles all types of liquidity, leverage and hedging solutions for alternative asset managers as borrowers of fund finance products, including net asset value (NAV) based/mark-to-market finance, subscription line finance, hybrid facilities that combine subscription line and NAV collateral, general partner financings, fund-level derivatives and portfolio secondaries financings.
Thomson Reuters has ranked Rick as a standout lawyer for the last two years (2023-2024) based on client feedback, while The Legal 500 UK has repeatedly recognized his achievements in securitizations since 2016. He is a member of the Law Society of England & Wales.
Prior to joining Cadwalader in 2024, Rick was a partner at another major global law firm. His notable experience has included representing:
- A leading alternative real estate finance provider in a novel multicurrency repack-to-repo program for the purposes of leveraging interests in European CRE loans
- A leading U.S. insurance company investor on a series of rated note feeder fund transactions involving U.S. credit fund sponsors
- A financial market structuring and platform-development company on the establishment of a significant risk transfer collateral financing platform for regulated financial institutions
- A UK asset manager on a securitization funding line collateralized by bridging loans secured by UK real estate
- A CRE debt platform on the establishment of a master loan-on-loan facility backed by commercial real estate debt across Europe
- A leading European alternative investment fund manager in a secondary Spanish nonperforming loan portfolio acquisition from a major European financial institution involving an acquisition of interests in a profit participating loan
- A leading CRE debt and securitized debt fund manager in a number of reverse repo facilities for the purposes of leveraging repackaged interests in European CRE loans
- A specialty finance vehicle backed by a global alternative asset manager in the establishment of a platform to finance the origination of litigation funding loans involving a rated asset-backed variable funding note issuance
- A venture capital fund in an innovative financing involving an investment into a late-stage venture capital–backed company in the United Kingdom structured as a private securitization
- A cross-border supply chain finance "white label" platform in the establishment of a reverse factoring program
- An international ecommerce provider in the establishment of a merchant cash advance platform to provide liquidity to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) impacted by the COVID-19 crisis
- A major European financial institution in a financing to a protected cell company to acquire a credit-linked note as part of an innovative significant risk transfer transaction, which involved a credit insurance policy issued by a major European insurer
- An alternative asset manager on the establishment of a servicing platform for UK nonperforming loan exposures
- A pan-European asset-backed special opportunities fund manager in a series of fund finance transactions, including multiple capital call facilities, an umbrella facility, a co-investment facility, ABL, NAV and general partner facilities
