1000 De La Gauchetière St W, Suite MZ400, Montréal, QC
Year called to bar: 1994 (ON); 2009 (QC)
François Gilbert is a partner in the Financial Services Group of McCarthy Tétrault LLP. François is qualified to practice in both Ontario and Quebec and has 30 years’ experience as a banking and finance lawyer, with expertise covering a broad range of sectors including structured finance, project finance, syndicated lending, securitization and derivatives. François has broad experience of syndicated loans, inter-creditor and cross-border security issues, asset-based lending and acquisition finance. He has also been involved in a number of project financings in the mining (both in Canada and internationally), energy (including natural gas and wind power) and infrastructure PPP sectors. He has significant expertise relating to: OTC and exchange-traded derivatives; structured products with embedded derivatives such as share, index and credit-linked notes; clearing and settlement systems; the regulation of derivatives, exchanges and clearing houses; repos; repackaging transactions; cash and synthetic structured credit transactions based on novel classes of debt (e.g., project finance and emerging market debt); and advising financial institutions and pension/investment funds in the context of structured transactions driven by tax or regulatory considerations.
On June 5, 2018, Transurban (ASX: TCL) acquired 100% of the equity interests in the A25 toll road asset and concession in Montréal, from Macquarie Infrastructure Partners. Transurban has assumed responsibility for the management and operations of the A25.
Victoria Gold Corp. entered into a series of definitive financing agreements with Orion Mine Finance (Orion), Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd. (Osisko) and Caterpillar Financial Services Ltd. (Cat Financial) with respect to a construction financing package totaling approximately $505 million in aggregate (the Financing).
On March 31, 2017, J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC (“J.C. Flowers”) and Värde Partners completed the acquisition of CitiFinancial Canada (now Fairstone Financial Inc. (“Fairstone”)) from an affiliate of Citigroup Inc. (“Citi”).
On November 18, 2016, Export Development Canada (“EDC”) provided the rupee equivalent of US$50 million in financing to IL&FS Transportation Networks Limited (“ITNL,” the largest BOT Road Asset owner in India in terms of length of road in its portfolio), a wholly owned subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (“IL&FS”), a major infrastructure developer based in Mumbai, India.
Golden Credit Card Trust completed a public offering of $950 million 4.159 per cent credit card receivable-backed senior notes, series 2003-1, and $50 million 5.069 per cent credit card receivable-backed subordinated notes, series 2003-1.
