Board Member
Simon Cook
Simon Cook has over 20 years’ experience as an English lawyer in the trade finance market. He started his career at Dentons and after 17 years he moved to Sullivan where he helped establish the London office in November 2013. Simon has worked in a wide variety of banking and finance transactions, including in relation to structured trade finance, trade finance, receivables finance, project finance, invoice discounting facilities and borrowing-base facilities in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the CIS. His work in the structured trade area has involved acting for both lenders and borrowers notably in oil, telecoms, soft commodities and metals sectors with particular experience in Africa and the Middle East where he has worked and travelled extensively. Simon also spent four years living and working in Dubai.
Simon is included for Trade finance in the list of Leading Individuals in the UK Legal 500, 2021 and the list of Ranked Lawyers for Chambers 2021 and recently authored a chapter on Trade Finance in Globe Law and Business’ new book entitled Oil and Gas Trading and various chapters in Thomson & Reuter’s second edition of a book entitled A Practitioner’s Guide to Trade and Commodity Finance. He has also participated in a number of structured trade finance, receivables finance and project finance conferences and seminars throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa over many years.
Simon’s links with ITFA go back many years, including being involved in producing ITFA’s Secondary Market Guidelines and Primary Market Guide. More latterly, he was involved with ITFA’s mentoring programme to try to help those looking to join the trade finance market and was a founding member of ITFA’s Africa Regional Committee in 2017, to which he was re-elected In November 2019. More recently still in October 2021, Simon was delighted to be elected to join the main ITFA board with responsibility for education.