Patrick Sutton

Patrick’s work in the commodity finance area covers a range of products, including borrowing base, pre-export, and prepayment facilities, receivables structures, and title-based structures. Increasingly, Patrick works on structured finance products in the trade and commodity space and was a leading adviser on the market’s first trade finance lending ABS programme.

Patrick advises clients on a range of trade finance products and instruments (including promissory notes, bills of exchange, and letters of credit and bank guarantees), and the laws and practices relating to them. He also advises clients on issues around “true sale” in connection with receivables and commodities financings, on secondary market participations, on the Capital Requirements Regulation, and on default and distressed scenarios.

Patrick is part of the firm’s global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practice. He has a particular focus on the financing of carbon.

Patrick also advises clients on sports financings, including loan and receivables purchase facilities in relation to transfers of football players, and loan facilities to football clubs secured by media payments and other revenue streams.

Patrick was recommended for trade finance by The Legal 500 UK 2022, having first been recommended in 2014. The publication describes him as a “commodities specialist with considerable depth of expertise in sophisticated trade finance work. He focuses heavily on deals for alternative lenders in the space where trade finance meets structured finance.”

He is also ranked by The Legal 500 UK 2023 as a Next Generation Partner for Finance: Emerging Markets and is listed as One to Watch in the UK Best Lawyers 2023.