Natalie Coates

Natalie is a Partner in Blake Morgan’s Banking & Finance team having previously been the senior legal adviser at one of the largest global B2B lessors.

Main areas of practice

Natalie is an English qualified solicitor with significant experience advising on managing and co-ordinating complex financing and re-financing transactions. She has expertise in asset finance and specialising on tailoring advice for the relevant stakeholder in receivables financing, operating and finance leases, loans and stocking facilities, which may complement other corporate lending, debt finance and/or restructuring advisory services.

Natalie is well-equipped to fully engage with, and support clients on, assessing, interpreting and implementing strategies to manage their asset finance requirements and key legal risks after spending nearly a decade advising global financial institutions and large corporates from within their in-house legal teams.

Natalie has sector expertise in retail, medical, construction, manufacturing and logistics, rail and IT, among others.

Clients

Natalie can support and advise a wide range of actors in the asset finance and asset based lending sector including urgent and complex transactions, with cross border elements.

Natalie is able to empower clients by negotiating and agreeing complex and high value structured finance transactions, corporate transactions and advice with time sensitive influencing factors mindful of the key strategic concerns for each business and its senior management.

Natalie’s clients include global financial institutions, large corporates and SMEs and she has a particular interest in the sustainable finance movement, supporting businesses with environmental, social, resilience and governance objectives, which are becoming increasingly important for those operating in the finance, and other, sectors.

Expertise

• Banking & Finance
• Insolvency

Career

Natalie has significant experience advising clients for over 15 years, both in private practice having trained at Blake Morgan, and in industry, having rejoined the firm in November 2023 after spending over seven years specialising in asset finance at the UK leasing arm of the French bank BNP Paribas. Natalie has also had several secondments with large corporates in defence and finance during her career, allowing her to advise businesses with a deep understanding of their credit and financial risk appetites and commercial drivers.

Whilst Natalie focuses on identifying and managing legal risks for those operating in the asset finance and asset based lending sectors, Natalie complements this practice area with pre-existing experience where she can advise on debt advisory, debt finance and restructuring and insolvency.

The breadth of legal advisory services at Blake Morgan also allows Natalie to connect her clients with relevant experienced legal advisers and provide additional legal support to clients as appropriate.

Natalie received her BA(Hons) degree from reading Law with French at Newcastle University, England and studied law at the Universite Montpellier, France before conducting her Legal Practice Course at BPP Law School, London, England.