Allen & Overy completes first Newchange on-line deal

City firm Allen & Overy has completed the first deal through its virtual Newchange dealroom, the technology for which it launched in January this year (see [2000] Gazette, 27 January, 8).The firm used a dealroom for a 128 million bond financing of the Treasury building at Great George Street in London - a private finance initiative (PFI).Allen & Overy acted for an insurer and underwriter of the deal - which took four months to complete - but all the documentation for the cases was dealt with in a Newchange on-line dealroom.

The dealroom enabled those involved to access the most up-to-date drafts relating to the transaction through the Internet.Although this is the first such dealroom completion, David Lee, the partner in Allen & Overy's projects department who acted on the deal, said last week that the firm is acting on up to 100 other deals for which Newchange dealrooms are already in operation.The deal also used the firm's new standardised documents, which it pioneered earlier this year in conjunction with the dealrooms.

The documentation is designed to remove the need for negotiation over standard clauses to accelerate the completion of PFI projects.

Anne Baldock, who heads Allen & Overy's PFI team, said the dealroom had definitely helped the firm to meet the tight timetable set for PFI transactions by the government.Mr Lee said: 'Our lawyers travel in the UK and abroad with laptops; this technology allows them, and our clients, to access all the latest material on a deal wherever they are so long as they can get Internet access.'He added that the dealroom, combined with new documentation, reduces the man-hours involved in the old hard-copy system.

'We no longer need to use our trainees to do the old time-consuming jobs such as red-lining drafts to show amendments.

This technology also avoids the need for couriers.'Mike McCarthy, a director of Ambac - Allen & Overy's client in the deal - said the dealroom avoided the need to sift through endless documents, and 'takes the guesswork out of the process'.

Jeremy Fleming