Milbank Advises Lenders on the Financial Close of the Multi-jurisdictional US$573 Million Reliance Ethane Ship Financing

Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP advised the Korean export credit agency, Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (“K-sure”), the ECA co-ordinator, HSBC, the commercial facility co-ordinator, Standard Chartered Bank, the K-sure covered facility lenders and the commercial facility lenders, on the financial close and delivery to Reliance Industries Limited of a series of the world's first very large ethane carriers ("VLECs") following the signing of the Finance Documents in October 2016.

The six vessels were financed and delivered between November 2016 and April 2017. The VLECs are the largest ethane carriers ever built, and will be used to carry liquid ethane from the United States to be used as feedstock for Reliance's petrochemical plants in India. The deliveries took place at Samsung's yard in South Korea.

The overall value of the transaction was US$573 million.

In recognition of the complexity and significance of this multi-jurisdictional financing, the deal has already received a significant number of industry accolades including, “Trade Finance Deal of the Year” at the Trade Finance Magazine awards 2016; “Shipping Debt Deal of the Year Asia” at the Global Transport Finance awards 2016; Marine Money’s “Best ECA Deal” 2016; “Best Transport Deal” at the Asset Regional Awards 2016 and was also named as one of TXF’s “Perfect 10 Deals of the Year.”

The cross-practice Milbank deal team was led by London Project, Energy and Infrastructure Finance partners John Dewar and Nick Swinburne and Young Joon (“YJ”) Kim from the Seoul office. The team also included senior associate Munib Hussain and associates Jon Cripps, Jonathan Roberts and trainee Chris Puttock in London and associate Brian Youn in Seoul.

John Dewar commented, “Having advised the lenders and arrangers on various loan facilities over a several-year period to Reliance Industries Limited for multiple projects, we are honoured to have advised on Reliance’s next big mandate. Our work on this transaction confirms once again the wide geographic footprint of the high-level project and transport financing mandates handled by our teams around the world.”