Paul Sroka

Profile

Paul joined the Firm as a Partner in July 2009 and has over 13 years of banking and finance experience.  

Areas of expertise

Paul advises major Australian and international financiers and corporate borrowers in a number of key areas including corporate finance, property and construction finance, debt capital markets (including section 128F compliant programmes), acquisition and project finance, asset and structured finance and asset-based and receivables financing.  He has acted in a broad range of secured and unsecured finance transactions across various recourse and multi-lender structures including syndicated and club loans, 'linked' bilateral facilities and risk participations, both in the mid-market/corporate and institutional banking sectors.  Paul also has considerable experience working in Asia.

Relevant experience
Some of the more recent significant transactions Paul has worked on include acting for:

• the financier of a shopping centre development in Point Cook, Victoria
• Sigma Pharmaceuticals in its syndicated revolving facilities;
• the club financiers with respect to term facilities to the Australian finance subsidiary of a major US heavy vehicle manufacturer;
• Heinz Australia in facilities for the acquisition of Golden Circle;
• the financier supporting the acquisition of the Nortuss building supplies group;
• the mandated lead arrangers and underwriters of the debt facilities for Wesfarmers’ successful bid for Coles by way of scheme of arrangement;
• a then ASX-listed company in secured multi-option facilities for the funding of an off market takeover of another listed entity;
• the mezzanine and senior financier for a private equity-led management buy-in of the international air-conditioning business of Futuris;
• a major regional bank in financing the acquisition by an ASX-listed entity of a 50% shareholding in a joint venture;
• an international financier in the leveraged buy-out of a Victorian-based food and beverage company;
• the equity financier for the Elm Apartments, South Melbourne;
• Grollo-Equiset in the construction financing of Goods Shed Docklands;
• the principal contractor in one of the short-listed bidding consortia for the New South Wales RailCorp’s replacement of rolling stock PPP;
• Lehman Brothers Australia (and its predecessor Grange Securities) as the arranger of several secured domestic bond issues by Victorian and New South Wales local governments and of subordinated and unsubordinated programmes for credit unions.