Onyinye Okafor is a partner in the firm’s Banking & Finance and Corporate Advisory departments. Her specialisations include corporate and project finance, debt restructuring, structured finance, trade finance, fintech, debt capital markets, insolvency and corporate advisory. Onyinye regularly advises international banks such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, Standard Chartered Bank, etc on derivatives and structured finance transactions and was a key member of the team that reviewed the netting provisions of the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020.

Onyinye is very familiar with finance and investment related documents including the LMA investment and leveraged finance documents, and she drafts, reviews and negotiates these documents on a regular basis together with drafting any related local law security documents (where required). She has been involved in the structuring and financing of various projects and advises international and local financial institutions on a day to day basis on issues concerning the creation and perfection of security and foreign exchange issues. She has advised on many DFI financing and has worked with several DFIs including IFC, FMO, Proparco, AFDD, AFC, IFAD etc.

She has also advised on and led many syndicated transactions in the corporate finance sphere including advising a group of Nigerian banks led by Citibank Nigeria Limited on a NGN200 billion medium term facility provided to MTN Nigeria Communications Limited; advising Ecobank Nigeria Limited and a club of Nigerian Banks in respect of a refinancing facility of billion provided to IHS Nigeria Limited. She also advised the Barak Fund SPC in relation to a trade finance facility to Global Foodpro Holdings Limited for the exportation of Cashew and ABSA in respect of a structured inventory finance facility to Valency International Trading PTE secured with relevant inventory in Nigeria. She has opined on many the enforceability of close-out netting provisions and contingent liabilities in structured finance transactions.

Onyinye is a member of the Sustainable Finance Sub-Committee of the Debt Capital Market Programme and a member of the Legal & Risk Management Thematic Area Meeting of the Financial Centre for Sustainability. She has written articles on cross-border finance and security including the IFLR Cross-Border Financing Report and Thomson Reuters Practical Law finance guide. Onyinye facilitates training sessions including the LMA documentation training session, in-house training sessions for clients on Credit and Security and Project Finance sessions for new lawyers within the Firm. Onyinye has been recognised for her work on the banking and finance space by both IFLR 1000 and Legal 500.