Nikolaos Kostikas
Partner

Nikolaos is a partner in the Project & Structured Finance Group. He has extensive experience in a broad range of domestic and cross-border corporate, structured and project finance and real estate transactions. Nikolaos specialises in corporate banking, financial services, capital markets law and regulatory issues, including data protection law. Another area he focuses on is hotel acquisition and management arrangements. Additionally, he has significant experience in hotel restructuring and work-out cases, as well as in commercial and banking litigation.

Nikolaos joined Watson Farley & Williams in 2010. Before that he practiced banking, financial and commercial law in a renowned Greek law firm, and he also spent ten years as a legal counsel in the financial sector.

• Advising Luxembourg banks in hotel sector financing in Greece.
• Advising the bondholders’ representative and security agency in large-scale bond loan financing of Greek large power corporate covered by ECA Hermes.
• Advising a finance party in the financing of the OSK PPP.
• Advising Greek large corporate on equipment acquisition covered by ECA Hermes.
• Advising Greek large hotel corporates on business cooperation transactiosn with international private equity funds and operators.
• Advising large corporates in restructuring of their financing portfolios.
• Advising foreign banks in refinancing their facilities with large corporate.
• Advising banks on factoring and forfeiting activities.
• Advising large retailers on RPA programmes with their suppliers and their banks.
• Advising banks and representing banks before Greek courts regarding enforcement, pre-insolvency and insolvency litigations.
• Advising banks in the sale and transfer of loans to funds.
• Advising Greek and international banks in structuring complex and cross border financing transactions with Greek and foreign corporates.
• Acting for Greek and international banks in restructuring their financing portfolios, and representing them in pre-bankruptcy and bankruptcy proceedings before Greek courts.
• Representing the Greek branch of an international bank in the restructuring of a €16m secured corporate lending facility from a large Greek institution.
• Performing due diligence and advising on bank portfolio transfer related to local banking regulatory issues (including issues with Bank of Greece, Hellenic Capital Markets Committee, Athens Stock Exchange), local banking & deposit secrecy protection regulation, competition law and data protection issues.
• Advising Greek and international banks on trade finance transactions (including stand-by letters of credit facilities).
• Acting for a Greek factoring company in the absorption of its business by a Greek credit institution in relation to due diligence on transferability issues of the factoring & forfeiting contracts, as well as the impacts and implications related to its clients.
• Advising HypoVereinsbank as to its role in the formation of joint ventures with other Greek credit / financial institutions and technical advisors to act as financial advisor to Hellenic Republic for PPP arrangements for the extension of the Athens Metro system, property exploitation for the State Property Company (ΚΕΔ) and car park concessions.
• Advising and acting for UniCredit Bank AG London on regulatory and data protection issues related to transfer of banking services from Athens branch to its London and Munich branches.

• 2008: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Law – PhD candidate
• 2000: University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College, School of Law, Centre of Commercial Law Studies – Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Banking and Finance
• 1999: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Law – Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Civil Law
• 1995: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Law – Ptychion in Law
• 1990: 19t1F Lyceum of City of Athens

• ‘The Contractual framing of international Project Finance’
• ‘The Venture Capital Regulation in the U.K. and the European Union’
• ‘Syndicated Loans; A mechanism of Corporate Finance’
• ‘Know – How Transfer Contracts; a new contractual model of current economy’
• ‘Contractual framework of consumer loans’
• ‘The legal problems of compound interest in banking transactions’

• Athens Bar (qualified in Sept 1997, admitted to the Supreme Court of Greece since Jan 2006).
• Association of Greek Commercialists
• Greek Civil Law Association
• The Postgraduate Alumni Society of the University of London

• 2010 – Present: Watson Farley & Williams, Partner
• 2001 – 2010: HypoVereinsbank AG (UniCredit Group), Branch in Greece, Legal Counsel/Head of Legal Unit of the Branch in Greece
• 1997 – 2001: Mourgelas, Dimitropoulos, Konstantelias Law Firm, Senior Associate