John-Hugh Colleran is a partner in the Banking and Capital Markets team. John-Hugh advises domestic and international funders and borrowers on a wide range of banking and finance transactions. His expertise includes secured and unsecured financings, bilateral and syndicated lending, tax-based lending structures, acquisition finance, real estate and development finance, fund finance, as well as general corporate lending and restructures. He is a trusted advisor to banks and financial institutions, specialised lenders, funds and large corporates. He has considerable experience acting for various vendors, purchasers and financers on disposals and acquisitions of loan portfolios and distressed assets.
John-Hugh’s previous career experience includes acting as in-house counsel for an international bank, where he worked on transactions and new products for its wholesale lending and structured finance teams. His role involved advising on participations in syndicated facilities, large and mid-cap corporate loans and invoice discounting and receivables purchases. He was also involved in a restructuring and enforcement project for a large book of non-performing loans. Prior to that, John-Hugh worked for another top tier Irish law firm, with a focus on commercial real estate.
John-Hugh lectures on the Law Society of Ireland’s professional practice and diploma courses and regularly gives presentations to bankers and lawyers. John-Hugh has also contributed to various publications including the Law Society’s latest Business Law Manual (Oxford University Press, 2023).
John-Hugh’s representative transactions include advising:
- Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c. on a large revolving credit loan facility to ICAV sub-fund, to financing a portfolio of approx. 1,100 residential properties in Dublin and Kildare.
- Bank of Ireland, on their award-winning deal (Deals of the Year, Finance Dublin) financing the Atlantic Aviation Group’s high profile acquisition of Lufthansa Technik Shannon, making the borrower one of the largest independent MROs (i.e. providers of aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul services) in Europe.
- Nord/LB on term loan facilities of approx. EUR30m for the purposes of financing the development of four primary care centres in Ireland with agreements for lease in favour of the HSE.
- Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c. on an award winning deal (Deals of the Year, Finance Dublin) financing the acquisition of the CRS Refrigeration / CRS Mobile Cold Storage group and facilitating a management buy-in by a private equity firm.
- Fine Grain Property (and its ICAV subfunds) on all of its acquisition financings of various high value commercial real estate investments.
- Deutsche Bank on its financing of a management buy-out of Seniors Money Ireland, a provider of lifetime loans and including a retail credit firm regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
- Union Bancaire Privée on numerous development financings by way of loan notes to Irish developers for the acquisition and development of large residential and commercial schemes.
- Danske Bank on a sustainability-linked financing to a state owned utilities provider.
- NAMA as a lead partner on various sales of distressed loan portfolios secured over Irish and international commercial and residential property assets, including the Project Gem loan sale (reported to have a par value of around €3bn), the Project Emerald/Ruby loan sale (with a reported par value of €4.7bn), Project Arch and the sale of the Capital Portfolio.
