Our Legal Insights Blog

Covenants have grown more complex with every market cycle. Since the Global Financial Crisis, borrower flexibility has expanded, terms have converged across instruments, and the legal language underpinning leveraged finance has become increasingly technical. The result? A landscape where instruments are converging, terms are evolving, and professionals need legal fluency to keep pace. That's why Fox Legal Training has developed its newest course, our Leveraged Loan Covenant Training (LLCT).

Leveraged finance contracts are complex. Multiple instruments are often used in the same deal, and the interplay between agreements can be difficult to untangle. For many credit professionals, it can be a daunting task. Where do you begin? How can you tell what really matters? That’s why FLT has launched its new course: How to Analyze any Leveraged Finance Contract.

FLT’s recent Knowledge Series webinar with Shan Qureshi from Octus Intelligence illustration how dramatically the liability management and restructuring landscape has evolved in the past decade – and why understanding legal documentation has never been more critical.

The Ardagh recapitalisation is moving quickly and for those following the European leveraged finance space, it’s certainly one to watch. Creditors are seizing control, Paul Coulson is stepping aside and the mechanics of the deal are unfolding in real time. For lenders, the takeaway is that documentation and legal levers can matter just as much as the financials. Here is a summary of what is happening and why it matters from a lender’s perspective.

I have been having lots of conversations about the powers – and limitations – of AI when it comes to legal document analysis. There is the camp that perceives AI as a tool for document analysis: AI without conceptual context is making us dumber. There is another camp that believes AI is the solution to their legal analysis needs – a panacea of sorts offering the holy grail of "upload the document and get all the answers." Why would someone want to invest in training for a skill that AI can complete with ease? It's a great question – so I decided to put AI to the test.

Following a recent webinar on LBO covenant analysis, it's clear the market needs to recalibrate its analytical framework. As I discussed on Bloomberg's Credit Edge podcast, we're experiencing an unprecedented moment: witnessing the consequences of covenant flexibility in existing deals while new transactions incorporate similar structural features.

I recently caught up with Bloomberg's James Crombie and Aidan Cheslin on The Credit Edge podcast and discussed how the credit markets are experiencing something I've never seen before in my career. We're witnessing unprecedented (and possibly misplaced) optimism and covenant flexibility alongside a frantic rush to get deals done, and the consequences – defaults, LMEs, restructurings, Chapter 11 – are playing out in real time.

If your head has been spinning after the last week of developments in European liability management, you're certainly not alone. As someone who has dedicated my career to building covenant confidence in credit professionals, I can tell you that this past week ranks among the most significant we've seen since March of last year, when Altice France and Ardagh completely changed the liability management game in a single week.