Senior Associate Richard Walton Named “Rising Star” by AirFinance Journal for 2016

Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy are delighted to announce that Richard Walton, Senior Associate in the Transportation & Space Group, has been selected by Airfinance Journal as one of eight of the most promising and high performing associates working in the aviation sector for 2016.

Richard joined Milbank in 2011, having previously worked for a number of years at a “Magic Circle” law firm in London. He has also spent nine months seconded to the legal department of a major aircraft leasing company and spent eight months working in Milbank’s New York office in 2012.

Richard has acted for most of the principal transportation and asset financing banks, lessors, manufacturers, operators and public sector bodies on a variety of national and cross-border asset leasing, financing and procurement transactions. He is recognised as having particular technical expertise in complex, structured financing transactions, including the growing non-US EETC market, and in portfolio and warehousing financings, handling the largest, most innovative and highest profile deals in the sector and playing a pivotal role in the development of capital markets, M&A and large portfolio deals in this space.

Richard’s recent experience includes acting as lead associate advising the bookrunners on the US$813 million enhanced equipment trust certificate (EETC) financing secured against three new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft for Turkish Airlines - the first EETC issuance by a Turkish airline (named “EETC Deal of the Year 2015, Europe” at the Global Transport Finance Awards) and advising Elix as borrower of a US$350 million secured warehouse facility from a syndicate of lenders for the refinancing of its portfolio of ATR and Bombardier turboprop aircraft of different vintages and leased to a variety of lessees, having also been the lead associate on the original financing of the portfolio for Elix (the original financing was recognised as one of Airfinance Journal’s “Deals of the Year 2015”).

James Cameron, co-head of the Transportation & Space Group in London commented “I have worked with Richard for 15 years and have seen him develop into a top-class practitioner. He is the go-to guy for many of our most valued clients, and is particularly adept at managing large, structured, multi-party transactions. He is incredibly bright, mentally agile, hard-working and always calm under pressure. It is for those reasons that clients have asked Richard to work on many of the sector’s most innovative transactions. We are very pleased that he has been recognised in this capacity”.

This award follows the success last year of Jo Syrett; another of the team’s senior associates who was honoured in the same capacity.

The full list of “rising stars” is published in the August issue of the magazines Lawyers Guide supplement.