Current practice

Tessa’s key areas of expertise are securitisation, structured credit products and derivatives.

Tessa’s experience includes significant periods in private practice and in-house in the United Kingdom as European Counsel and Director of Citigroup Alternative Investments.

Having worked extensively in debt capital markets and securitisation over the years, Tessa has dealt with Australian domestic, Euromarket and United States SEC registered and privately placed asset-backed and vanilla debt securities issues. Tessa has acted for issuers, arrangers, warehouse funders and swap counterparties both in transactional and advisory capacities. She regularly speaks about and writes on securitisations, CDOs, APRA-related and other regulatory and statutory issues.

Tessa is noted as ‘recommended’ or a ‘leading practitioner’ in the current Chambers Global, AsiaPac Legal 500, IFLR’s Top 1000 and PLC’s Which Lawyer?.

Industry experience

Some of Tessa’s matters include acting for:

• warehouse financier, security trustee and issuer on several restructurings of Australian securitisations and facilities due to adverse market conditions
• Bank of America in relation to financing of Australian bank-originated and securitised home loans
• Adelaide Bank on the derivatives aspects of its Lifestyle funds
• Goldman Sachs International, Deutsche Bank and Telstra Super in relation to CPPI and various derivatives transactions
• Australian Executor Trustees as security trustee under the James Hardie victims compensation scheme and under the Orange Hospital PPP and Queensland University PACE secured bond transactions
• BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Scotland and CALYON on the Australian aspects of a US$2.9 billion securitisation bridge facility in relation to the acquisition of the Hertz Group by various private equity investors
• Members Equity Bank in relation to its ninth global RMBS issue, involving SEC Reg AB registration, domestic Australian and Irish stock exchange-listed tranches (matter led by Lachlan Roots)
• ANZ, NAB and Westpac as senior bond subscribers under two auto-receivables securitisations by a global auto manufacturer
• BNY Trust and JP Morgan Chase as security trustee under the Allco, AAF and SAFIF aircraft lease securitisation programmes, Allco Aviation Fund and Freight Rail rolling stock financing
• JP Morgan Chase as security trustee, cashflow and systems manager under the Allco Max Securities Trust (awarded ALB’s Debt Markets Deal of the Year, 2006)
• SG as note subscriber/swap provider under CNH’s dealer floor-plan securitisation (the first dealer floor-plan securitisation in Australia)

Professional background

Tessa is admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales (1986) and legal practitioner in New South Wales (2001). She graduated from the University of New South Wales with a B.Juris in 1981, from Cambridge University with a BA(Law) in 1983 and was awarded an honorary MA(Law) in 1987.

She is a member of the Australian Securitisation Forum’s Regulatory, Prudential and Conference sub-committees, represents the firm on ISDA’s Asian regional structured products committee and is part of the International Bar Association’s Capital Markets group.