19 July 2004 – LAWFUEL – €500m Porsche Bank auto loan and lease receivables securitisation closes Porsche Bank and ABN AMRO have acted as originator and lead arranger on one of the largest ever Austrian securitisations, successfully refinancing a conduit warehouse securitisation of €500m of auto loan and lease receivables through the issue of term notes listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. International law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer acted as counsel to the transaction.
Friedrich Jergitsch, a Vienna-based partner at Freshfields who advised on the deal, said, ‘To act on such a large deal is unusual in this market, but more interesting still was the structure employed. We took out the existing commercial paper-based financing provided by the ABN AMRO sponsored Tulip programme by issuing a FACT-2004 term note, which is a novel approach, and one that has worked very well’.
Three Freshfields offices were involved in the transaction. Working alongside Jergitsch were partners Bernhard Kaiser in Frankfurt and structured finance group head Alan Newton in London. The Jersey law elements of the transaction were dealt with by Peter Longstaffe and Christopher Byrne of Ogier & Le Masurier in Jersey.
