Onyinye Okafor

Onyinye Okafor is a Partner in the firm's Banking & Finance and Corporate Advisory departments. Her primary practice area is Banking and Finance Law, and her specialisations include corporate and project finance, debt restructuring, structured finance, trade finance, fintech, debt capital markets, insolvency and corporate advisory.

She regularly advises international banks such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan and Standard Chartered Bank on derivatives and structured finance transactions, and was a key member of the team that reviewed the netting provisions of the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020.

She is very familiar with finance and investment-related documents, including the LMA investment and leveraged finance documents, and drafts, reviews and negotiates these documents regularly, together with related local law security documents. She has been involved in the structuring and financing of various projects and advises international and local financial institutions on a day-to-day basis on issues concerning the creation and perfection of security and foreign exchange issues. She has advised on many DFI financings and has worked with several DFIs, including IFC, FMO, Proparco, AFDD, AFC and IFAD.

She has advised on and led many syndicated transactions in the corporate finance sphere, including advising a group of Nigerian banks led by Citibank Nigeria Limited on a NGN 200 billion medium term facility provided to MTN Nigeria Communications Limited, and advising Ecobank Nigeria Limited and a club of Nigerian banks in respect of a refinancing facility provided to IHS Nigeria Limited. She also advised the Barak Fund SPC in relation to a trade finance facility to Global Foodpro Holdings Limited for the exportation of cashew, and ABSA in respect of a structured inventory finance facility to Valency International Trading PTE secured with relevant inventory in Nigeria. She has opined on the enforceability of close-out netting provisions and contingent liabilities in structured finance transactions.

She is a member of the Sustainable Finance Sub-Committee of the Debt Capital Market Programme and a member of the Legal & Risk Management Thematic Area Meeting of the Financial Centre for Sustainability. She has written articles on cross-border finance and security, including the IFLR Cross-Border Financing Report and Thomson Reuters Practical Law finance guide. She facilitates training sessions including the LMA documentation training session, in-house training sessions for clients on credit and security, and project finance sessions for new lawyers within the firm.

She has been recognised for her work in the banking and finance space by both IFLR 1000 and Legal 500.