Tamara Box

Tamara is the Managing Partner – Europe & Middle East and the head of Structured Finance at Reed Smith. She is the former chair of the firm’s Financial Industry Group. Tamara has more than 20 years’ experience in advising arrangers, dealers, issuers and trustees in a wide range of debt instruments, including bonds (securitisations, project bonds, high-yield, convertible, and exchangeable bonds and Islamic bond issuances), the establishment of debt programmes, liability management, and private placements. She has advised all participants, including arrangers, originators, servicers and trustees, in the securitisation of a wide variety of assets in numerous jurisdictions. She also regularly advises trustees, issuers, arrangers, investors and servicers in securitisations, high-yield bonds, structured debt restructurings and workouts. Further, she has significant experience of derivatives and structured products.

She has been involved in a number of cutting-edge securitisation transactions, including the representation of the arrangers of the first Shariah-compliant RMBS out of Saudi Arabia; the first cross-border securitisation in South Africa; the first Turkish workers’ remittances securitisation and the first onshore securitisation of lease receivables in Turkey; and the representation of the originator in the first CMBS out of Dubai. She has worked on structured finance transactions involving assets in the UK, Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Turkey, Greece, Mexico, the United States, Japan, Russia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, South Africa, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Tamara has a particular specialisation in emerging market structured finance and Islamic structured financings.

More recently, Tamara has been actively involved in the restructuring of transactions affected by the recent credit crisis, and especially by the Lehman bankruptcies. She has also been involved in numerous distressed debt and portfolio sales and acquisitions, including related vendor financings.

Tamara is a recognised authority in the area of securitisation, having been regularly named a leading practitioner by each of the International Financial Law Review’s Guide to the World’s Leading Structured Finance and Securitisation Lawyers, The Legal 500’s Legal Experts, Chambers’ UK Guide and The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers. She was also named “Best in Securitisation and Structured Finance” in Euromoney’s Women in Business Law Awards in June 2011 and again in June 2013.