Traditional balance sheet lending is drying up and has become unattractive to many financiers in the sub-region. Collateral-backed lending has become less attractive to lenders who have appetite for African debt.

Our structured finance practice recognizes the unique challenges balance sheets in our markets face in raising capital for CAPEX, working capital, and other complex financing requirements. Through our structured finance practice, we have succeeded in engineering financing solutions that avoid weak and unattractive balance sheets to finance some of the most complex transactions in Africa.

Weak balance sheets may not necessarily mean bad businesses. They may be the result of temporary gaps in cash flow. It is our firm conviction that these situations present opportunities to find creative ways of unleashing other untapped cash flows within the business. Our structured finance solutions are employed to allow businesses to access funding without recourse to their balance sheets. Through this product, we have enabled many businesses to leverage the profile and balance sheets of their related parties to raise capital to meet specific financing needs without overburdening their balance sheets.

In the last seven years, we have successfully employed this off-balance-sheet lending approach to assist major private and public corporates to ring-fence various cash flows to raise over approximately US$1 billion in debt to solve very difficult cash flow challenges faced by these firms.

Our PPP practice takes a significant cue from the attractiveness of structured finance to both local and international banks and funds that have an appetite for various project finance opportunities in Africa.