International law firm Stephenson Harwood has appointed Saugata Mukherjee as a partner in its aviation and structured finance practice in Singapore. Saugata’s previous experience includes working in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s London office as a senior associate in the structured and asset finance group and also as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in London.
Saugata has particular expertise in advising on aircraft financing structures, including sale and lease-backs, secured loans, finance leases and PDP lending structures. He also advises on derivatives and structured products. He has experience in structuring credit-linked notes, synthetic equity trades, securitisations, secured margin-lending trades and catastrophe bond issues.
His client base includes acting for banks, corporates and airlines on aircraft and structured financings – with extensive work undertaken in relation to the development of tax-driven aircraft financing.
Saugata will work closely with Paul Ng, Stephenson Harwood’s global head of aviation. Paul was previously Freshfields’ head of asset finance for Asia, before joining Stephenson Harwood. Paul Ng said: “Saugata’s background – working for both a law firm and an investment bank – gives him a unique breadth of experience, which will enhance our aviation finance team in Singapore.”
Stephenson Harwood’s award winning aviation finance practice has worked on some of the most high profile recent deals in the aviation sector. The team won ‘asset and corporate finance deal of the year’ in the Asian Legal Business awards 2012 for its work advising Lion Air on the biggest ever airline order for 230 Boeing 737 aircrafts (including Boeing’s new 737 MAX aircraft), valued at US$21.7 billion. In recent years, Stephenson Harwood has made several important hires of highly sought after fee earners from Magic Circle and Wall Street firms.
