Royal Bank of Scotland has concluded agreements to sell at least USD600 million worth of shipping loans from its portfolio as part of efforts to exit the sector.

Japanese financial services firm ORIX Corporation has agreed to acquire approximately USD300 million worth of shipping loans from RBS. Germany's Berenberg Bank will assist ORIX with agency bank functions for the elevated loan portfolio and tin parallel Berenberg has agreed to acquire a similar value of loans from RBS.

The loans ORIX Corporation is buying from RBS are investment grade and made to Greek borrowers.

ORIX Corporation was represented by an international multi-disciplinary advisory team at Norton Rose Fulbright covering ship finance, M&A, employment law, competition and data protection.

The Norton Rose Fulbright team was led by banking partners Jeremy Gibb (Tokyo) and Simon Lew (London) and by corporate finance partner Chris Viner (London) who is also head of the firm’s Japan Desk in London. Banking partner Paul Coggins (Tokyo) led on structuring and due diligence.

Accounting and tax advice was provided by PwC.

Norton Rose Fulbright partner Jeremy Gibb commented: “It was terrific to have the opportunity to work alongside a strong ORIX team on this transaction. Asset acquisitions in the banking sector are something we have considerable experience of working on, as demonstrated by our earlier involvement in the Lloyds Bank shipping loan portfolio sell-offs in London and various distressed loan asset purchases in Tokyo. A special dimension which we were able to offer on this cross-border transaction was our Japan Desk in London working cohesively with the Tokyo office so as to maximise the use of time differences and deliver a quality product to the client.”