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Blakes and Freehills bring home mortgage deal
Blake Dawson has acted for GE Capital on its entry into a loans purchase deed to sell to Pepper Australia, advised by Freehills, its interest in three loan portfolios for a total consideration…
Lawyers Weekly
Blake Dawson has acted for GE Capital on its entry into a loans purchase deed to sell to Pepper Australia, advised by Freehills, its interest in three loan portfolios for a total consideration of approximately $4.8 billion.
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Pepper Homeloans led a consortium that was successful against contesting bids from a number of other bidders looking to acquire GE's Australian and New Zealand residential loan assets.
The portfolios include insured and non-conforming loan books across Australia and New Zealand. Once completed, the sale will represent a total exit by GE from the Australian and New Zealand home lending market, following the sale of the majority of its home loans portfolio to CBA in 2008.
Pepper Australia is a non-bank lender, part of the Singapore based Pepper Group. Its acquisition of GE's mortgage books will be financed by a consortium of facility providers including CBA, NAB, Westpac, Deutsche Bank and Varde Partners.
The Freehills team was led by partner Mark Crean and senior associate Mark Currell.
Crean said the team worked tirelessly for several weeks to help secure the deal for the Pepper Homeloans' consortium and was fortunate to have worked with a highly motivated and professional bid team.
"It has been a privilege to work on such a transformational deal for our client, which will see it triple in size," Crean said. "While it has been challenging and complex, I'm very pleased that we have helped achieve an excellent commercial outcome for Pepper Homeloans."
Blake Dawson lead partner Peter Stirling was assisted by Jonathan Stewart and Ted Nixey.
"We are delighted to have assisted GE on this milestone transaction which represents a culmination of its strategy to exit the home loan business. It was a complex transaction which brought together a number of disciplines across the firm," said Stirling.
