Simon Raftopoulos

Simon Raftopoulos is a partner, the local team leader of the Insurance team and a member of the Banking and Asset Finance and Islamic and Structured Finance teams.

He represents clients in a wide variety of corporate finance transactions, including private equity and fund finance, joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, initial and secondary public offerings, structured finance, asset securitisations (including CLO transactions) and private placements of equity and debt securities.

In addition to practicing corporate law Simon leads the Insurance practice in the Cayman office.

PLC Which Lawyer? (2010 and 2011) and IFLR1000 (2010 and 2011) recognised Simon as a leading lawyer in the field of Corporate/M&A and Corporate Finance. In 2010, Legal 500 described Simon as a 'rising young star' for structured finance, M&A, general banking and private equity work. In the 2012 Caribbean rankings, Legal 500 listed Simon as an ‘experienced practitioner’. Simon was also recognised in the inaugural rankings for Insurance/Re-insurance in Legal 500 (2012). Chambers Global 2012 states that Simon 'impresses clients with his responsiveness and knowledge of the corporate sector.' Clients also say that Simon is 'terrific and super helpful.'

Simon joined Appleby in 2006 and was made partner in 2009. Prior to joining Appleby in 2006, Simon was an associate in the Banking and Financial Services Group of Matheson Ormsby Prentice Solicitors in Dublin.
He is fluent in Afrikaans.

Recent transactional highlights include advising:

• A leading upstream oil and gas focused private equity firm in successfully closing its US$3.5 billion fund.
• The seller, as Cayman counsel, in connection with a US$1.9 billion acquisition of Central American banking firm BAC-Credomatic by Colombian banking conglomerate Grupo Aval (subject to regulatory approval and conditions)
  
  
• The investors on the US$7.6 billion restructuring of the Education Media and Publishing group which was one of the largest of its type in Irish corporate history
  
  
• A leading offshore drill rig company and certain of its Cayman subsidiaries in the acquisition and/or transfer of drilling rigs, each valued at approximately half a billion US dollars
  
  
• A large operator and developer of Chinese hydropower plants in connection with its US$1 billion initial public offering via American depositary receipts on the New York Stock Exchange
  
  
• A global leader in life insurance and employee benefits in connection with its US$15.5 billion purchase of the life insurance subsidiary of a well-known global insurer
  
  
• The largest secondary private equity fund in the world in the closing of the largest secondaries fund ever raised with investor commitments of US$4.5 billion

• Alternative Risk Financing
• Banking & Asset Finance
• Capital Markets
• Corporate Finance
• Insurance
• Mergers & Acquisitions