Richard Hakes

Practice Areas

Richard is chair of Reed Smith’s global Transportation Industry Group, a group including nearly 40 partners across multiple jurisdictions. A leading asset finance partner, Richard advises on a wide range of aviation and shipping matters, primarily on the financing, leasing, trading, and repackaging of transportation assets, acting across the whole spectrum and life cycle of shipping and aviation deals.

Richard advises lenders and arrangers, equity investors, leasing companies, and operators on aircraft, maritime, and other asset-based and receivables-backed finance and leasing transactions, including their restructuring. He has extensive experience in structured and large-scale cross-border matters, including leading teams on many award-winning transactions. He is particularly well known for his work for private equity, hedge fund and other alternative investor clients.

Richard frequently advises clients who are looking at some of the most complex and innovative transportation transactions, and has extensive experience in a wide range of structured and large-scale cross-border transactions, including in export credit agency-related matters, commercial debt finance, Islamic finance, Japanese operating leases, tax lease structures, pre-delivery payment finance, operating leases, individual asset and portfolio sales and purchases, securitizations, capital markets products, joint ventures, business jet finance, engine finance, OEM purchase agreements, and restructurings. He is particularly active in the secondary debt trading and special situations sectors, having acted for buyers, sellers, and financiers of large secured and unsecured loan and lease receivable portfolios, as a consequence of which he has also been involved in the resolution of a number of complex disputes in the maritime and aviation sectors. He is also extremely active in the nascent advanced air mobility (AAM) sector involving drone and eVTOL financings.

A regular speaker and commentator on transportation matters, Richard is ranked by independent legal directories as one of the leading individuals in asset finance and commercial aviation. He collected a prestigious “rising star” recognition from Law360 and has been listed three times by Airline Economics in its “40 under 40” recognition of the most outstanding individuals under 40 years of age.