Lending, guarantees and corporate finance

A personal guarantee is a legally binding commitment by an individual, usually a director or shareholder, to repay a company's debt if the company itself cannot. It removes the protection of limited liability for that specific obligation, so your personal assets, including your home, savings and other property, could be at risk if things go wrong.

Most lenders require a personal guarantee as a condition of lending to an SME, particularly where the company has limited assets or a short trading history. Before you sign, the lender will typically require you to take independent legal advice from a solicitor who is not acting for the borrower company or the lender.

That is not a box-ticking exercise. The guarantee must be fully explained to you, so that you understand the extent of your liability, the circumstances in which it could be called on and whether the terms are fair. We explain what you are agreeing to in plain English, identify any terms that are more onerous than standard and issue the solicitor's certificate your lender requires.

Corporate finance covers the legal and structural side of how businesses raise, deploy and manage capital. For most SMEs, that means working with banks, alternative lenders or private investors to fund growth, acquisitions, management buyouts or day-to-day working capital.

Every significant financing arrangement involves legal documentation, whether that is a facility letter, a loan agreement, a debenture, a charge over property or a combination of these. Getting that documentation right is critical. Poorly drafted or misunderstood terms can create unexpected obligations, restrict what your business can do without lender consent or leave you personally exposed in ways you did not anticipate.

Loan agreements and security documents are complex. We make sure you understand the terms before you commit, not after the facility has been drawn down and the obligations are already running.

Both. We act for borrowers, lenders and guarantors, which means we understand the deal from both sides and can anticipate issues from both directions.

For borrowers, that means making sure you know exactly what you are agreeing to and that the documentation reflects the commercial terms you negotiated. For lenders, it means security that is properly constituted, registered where required and enforceable if it needs to be.

We work alongside your accountant, financial adviser and the lender's solicitors so the legal work fits into the wider transaction without slowing things down or creating unnecessary friction.