International commercial law firm Stephenson Harwood has appointed David Lacey as a partner to the firm’s banking and asset finance group to head up the firm’s non- contentious trade finance practice.

Lacey’s recruitment further enhances the firm’s greater diversity and overall strength in this area, according to Stephenson Harwood. According GTR’s annual readers “poll of leading trade finance law firms, Stephenson Harwood is consistently ranked as one of the best law firms in trade finance for contentious and non-contentious work.

Lacey is a leading trade finance expert and joins from Lovells. His experience involves a broad range of commodity financings across numerous jurisdictions, including large pre-payment and pre-export financing facilities, factoring, receivables financing and lease financing. He is also experienced in bank reorganisations, mergers and transfer of assets, and a variety of other financing, restructuring and insolvency matters.

Lacey is the sixth partner appointment to the firm’s banking and asset finance group this year and joins a group which comprises over 50 lawyers worldwide and is recognised for its commercial banking work, ship finance, aviation finance and asset leasing.

Head of Stephenson Harwood’s banking and asset finance group, Mark Russell comments: “We recruited David as part of a strategic decision to strengthen our non-contentious trade finance practice. David is an experienced multi-jurisdictional practitioner and his appointment further enhances our offering to banks at the highest level.”