We're trusted by 11 of the top 12 law firms in European high yield, as well as nine of the top 10 investment banks. One client shares their story on how 9fin helps them save time and stay informed in the leveraged finance world.

This is an anonymised customer story with one of our key clients.

“I’m a senior associate at a Magic Circle law firm, where I focus on high yield bonds. We have a fully integrated team focusing on all aspects of the leveraged finance capital structure, including both new money high yield and liability management.

We work closely with our corporate private equity practices, as well as our bankruptcy, restructuring and insolvency teams across several jurisdictions.”

Before 9fin: manual, time-consuming work

The research process for high yield lawyers has remained largely the same — when lawyers start working on a new transaction, or analysing a new credit, they will go through the same few steps. Without access to 9fin, these steps can be manual and time-consuming.

Sifting through the library

“We run a wide-ranging press search, which is a massive operation. We then go through all relevant press coverage related to the company going back several years, to get a better understanding of the company and identify key themes or potential issues.”

Running a search is one thing — finding the exact information they need is another.

“Sifting through these documents takes a lot of time — searches pick up a lot of junk that we have to sort through, but it’s a byproduct of being as comprehensive as possible.”

Getting information from clients

Lawyers will visit issuers’ websites to access public reporting documents, or contact someone who can provide access to password protected IR sites. Getting this information, however, can be touch-and-go, as our client explained:

“Some companies are protective of this information, and want to run verifications before they grant access. In some cases, we request access and someone responds within a couple of days. In other cases, we don’t get a response at all.”

In October 2022 our client subscribed to 9fin, exploring a faster, smarter way to find debt market intelligence.

Enter 9fin: value from the get-go

Getting accustomed to the platform was straightforward, and 9fin’s ease of use was a definite highlight:

“Many lawyers are not tech savvy, so it’s important to have a platform that doesn't require a high learning curve. 9fin was immediately easy to digest, easy to integrate into my work – and I saw from the get-go.”

A centralised source of truth

“I use 9fin as a one-stop shop. It’s great to have access to not just the press releases, but the financial reporting from various companies, as well as offering and contractual documents, covenants, news and analysis. 9fin pulls this all into one place.

Going into a single platform to explore the covenants of a company’s existing capital structure, and tying that back to where that company currently stands from a financial perspective by reviewing their latest financial reporting and press releases, is really useful in my day-to-day.”

Information at your fingertips

“The highly negotiated and key structural terms live in the description of notes section of the OM. I spend a significant amount of my day reading descriptions of notes so that I can fully understand the relevant capital structure and explain it in detail to my clients.

I also need it to understand and identify new features and terms in the market. Before 9fin, identifying the right documents would often involve manually searching through many different offering documents, in their entirety, to find relevant precedents.

Running a description of notes document search in 9fin is really easy. I can search within specific sections of the offering document, directly download the description of notes section of the relevant precedents, and have them to hand in my meetings.

Thanks to 9fin I don’t have to read through five or six full offering documents to identify the language that I’m actually looking for.”

Best-in-class analysis

“I read 9fin's editorial content on the train! The articles are written in a way that’s informative and uses the language of leveraged finance lawyers, without being dry and jargon-heavy.

It’s been a key component of helping me integrate 9fin more and more into my practice – once in the platform you’re exposed to a whole world of additional information and value.”

Helping lawyers stay on the ball

“9fin helps me follow particular credits, and sends news alerts whenever they publish press releases, which is really helpful. It is a great advantage to be the first to know about relevant events and bring them to the attention of my team, other colleagues within the firm or my clients.

It’s also useful for one-off, niche questions. For example, a client may ask if we’ve seen a certain provision before in any other deal. With 9fin’s powerful search function, I am typically able to quickly identify precedents for even the most esoteric provision.

Answering one-off questions is much quicker with 9fin, which is especially useful when we have several deals ongoing at the same time.”

Time saved for the work that matters

9fin enables the high yield legal team at this law firm to free up time for high-value work. Through 9fin, lawyers have:

• A centralised source of truth for debt market intelligence
• A world of information at their fingertips
• Access to best-in-class analysis

“9fin is definitely the first port of call on most questions. When I’m analysing a new credit, or working on a new transaction, 9fin is one of the first places I turn to – it's the platform that’s always open on my desktop.”

This is an anonymized customer story with one of our key clients. To see how 9fin can help you save time and win more business, get in touch below.