October 12, 2017 (New York) – International law firm Proskauer represented ACORN OakNorth Holdings Limited in its latest investment round in which it secured a £154 million investment from affiliates of The Clermont Group, Toscafund and Coltrane Asset Management. 

Launched in September 2015, OakNorth is a UK bank providing fast, flexible and accessible debt finance (£500,000 to £20 million) to UK businesses, helping to create thousands of new jobs and homes in the country. In 25 months, it has grown its loan book to over £800 million with clients including LEON, Galliard Homes, Frogmore, Brasserie Blanc, Strawberry Star and The Collective. Its loans have directly helped with the creation of over 3,000 new homes and 2,000 new jobs in the UK, as well as adding £3 billion to the economy. The funding will enable OakNorth to significantly boost its contribution to the economy and launch its ACORN data and technology platform, which enables lenders to originate, underwrite, monitor and book transactions faster, more efficiently and with more rigor, to lenders around the world. 

Earlier this month, we closed our first loan transaction for OakNorth, led by London partners Ben Davis and Paul Lucas. We previously represented OakNorth in connection with its initial capital raising efforts in 2014 and its sale of a 40% stake to Mumbai-based Indiabulls Group for approximately $100 million in 2015, and its co-founders, Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman, in connection with the sale of Copal Partners, which provides offshore research and analytics services to the global financial and corporate sectors, to Moody’s Corporation in 2011.

The Proskauer team included partners Daniel Ganitsky and Michael Ellis and associate Grant Darwin (M&A), and partner Martin Hamilton and associate Mani Kakkar (Tax).