Brodies lawyers joined Aberdeen City Council at the London Stock Exchange (LSE) yesterday to celebrate the local authority's landmark bond listing.
Scotland's largest law firm acted as lead legal adviser to Aberdeen City Council on its £370 million index-linked bond issue, which was the first of its kind by a Scottish local authority. It was also the first London Stock exchange listing for the bond securities of a Scottish local authority, and the first credit rating awarded to both a Scottish local authority and its bond securities.
Michael Stoneham (partner, banking & finance), Andrew Akintewe (Head of funds), Charlotte Nicolson (senior solicitor, corporate & commercial), Clare Devlin (solicitor, banking & finance) joined Jenny Laing, Leader of Aberdeen Council, and other senior council officials at the LSE as she performed the official opening of the market. Ms Laing was invited to conduct the opening ceremony in recognition of the pioneering nature of the bond listing.
The bonds were admitted to trading on the main market of the LSE on 8 November 2016 and the proceeds will be used to part-finance the council's transformational capital and infrastructure programme. The listing followed the decision by the credit rating agency Moody's to assign Aberdeen City Council an Aa2 rating.
Brodies' top-tier ranked corporate, debt finance and tax specialists acted on all aspects, English and Scottish, negotiating the bond terms and conditions, admission to trading on the LSE and a range of other legal matters. The council chose Brodies as its lead adviser because of its expertise in innovative finance and capital markets transactions.
Michael Stoneham said: "We are delighted to have supported Aberdeen City Council on this landmark financing transaction. We expect it to set a UK precedent for flexible and efficient fund-raising by public sector bodies in order to support their infrastructure investment programmes."
