EMEA Loan House: HSBC
Trusted partner
By harnessing trust, reliability and global connectivity to provide exceptional, client-focused loan solutions across acquisition, corporate and infrastructure financing, one bank stood out from the crowd. For delivering strategic impact for its clients, HSBC is IFR’s EMEA Loan House of the Year.
As part of its recently refreshed global strategy, HSBC created a product-agnostic, client-focused strategic finance unit, combining loan structuring, corporate finance advisory and ratings expertise.
“It’s a mindset that really tries to deliver agility, simplicity, reliability ... to really be the most trusted bank globally and servicing our customers for the long term through the depth of what we offer as a franchise,” said HSBC's Romeet Shankardass, head of strategic loan capital for Europe and the US.
The approach is already paying dividends, propelling the bank to fourth in the overall EMEA bookrunner league table from 10th in the previous awards period.
The bank was at the forefront of many of the largest and most important transactions of the year, providing underwritten and syndicated financings in tight timeframes to ensure confidentiality while minimising market risk.
Two financings, successfully syndicated over a challenging summer, exemplified this approach.
The bank was an underwriter and bookrunner on Luxembourg-headquartered family-owned food company Ferrero’s US$3.1bn-equivalent bridge financing backing its acquisition of US breakfast cereal company WK Kellogg. The financing was flawlessly delivered in a very short timeframe, despite underlying complexity.
HSBC was a lead underwriter on French IT services firm Capgemini’s €4bn-equivalent bridge financing backing its acquisition of technology outsourcing company WNS, announced in July. The deal had added complexity as WNS is based in India, listed on the New York Stock Exchange and incorporated in Jersey.
Again, credit approvals and signing were turned around in quick order. The deal was syndicated in two steps, ahead of the European holiday season.
“We broke some of the taboos around distribution over the summer period. We felt we had a good pulse on where credit committees were and how to get it done within that timeframe,” said Bradley Burk, managing director, loan syndicate.
HSBC leveraged its unrivalled distribution capabilities to bring new liquidity from around the globe to its corporate clients.
It played a lead role on a £3bn financing for UK sporting goods retailer Frasers Group that established significant liquidity to support the company’s growth. The deal was launched at £1.75bn and syndication went wide.
The response was enormous, with 37 banks coming into the deal, including many new lenders to Frasers. In the end, Frasers took a £2.159bn revolving credit facility and an £850m term loan.
The bank helped lead three innovative financings for Jaguar Land Rover in 2025, including a US$650m term loan that closed in April. Syndication was aimed at taking advantage of Asia term loan appetite, and it closed twice subscribed with a major scaling back of banks’ commitments.
Following on that, HSBC was ECA coordinator on JLR’s £1bn UK Export Finance-backed loan in August and another £1.5bn UKEF-backed loan in September, which supported the company in the wake of a cyberattack, which led to a costly shutdown of production.
The bank also took a lead role on a €10.5bn refinancing for French family-owned dairy group Lactalis, including €8bn of term loans, the largest non-event driven euro term loan raised in the last 10 years. The highly successful syndication raised more than €13bn from the market.
The bank made its mark in the Middle East, breaking ground with two financings combining Islamic finance principles with ESG-linked pricing, requiring time and effort to educate two different investor groups.
It had a lead roles on Saudi Arabia's Al Rajhi Bank’s US$2.255bn five-year sukuk murabaha, the largest Islamic sustainable financing for a financial institution globally; and a US$275m debut sustainability-linked sukuk murabaha for Qatar’s QInvest, one of the first sustainability-linked facilities for an Islamic investment bank.
The bank set up a dedicated infrastructure finance unit in 2024, specialising in greenfield and brownfield financing, putting its colossal balance sheet to work to support the energy transition.
HSBC was underwriter, joint structuring bank and export credit coordinator on a £1bn green loan for Japanese battery maker AESC, which financed a new gigafactory in Sunderland. It also played a major role on the £3.5bn financing backing the East Anglia Three offshore wind farm and held senior roles on the landmark £5bn ECA-backed loan to finance the construction of the £38bn 3.2GW Sizewell C nuclear power plant.