Sophie Lok

Partner

Sophie Lok is a stand-out lawyer - she has great technical skills, easily navigates the land mines in the documentation and is a great communicator.

Legal 500 EMEA 2024

Emailsophie.lok@akd.partners

Call+33 (0) 1 40 15 24 00

Paris

About

Sophie Lok is a partner in Finance practice in Paris.

Sophie has an extensive experience in acquisition and corporate financings. She avises banks and debt funds and has a developed an expertise on various products including senior, unitranche, TLB, SSRCF, PIK, mezzanine. She also regularly assists private equity funds and large corporates on both domestic and cross-border transactions.

Sophie can also assist clients with other types of financings.

Areas of FocusFinance Private Equity Structured Finance and Securitization Asset-based Lending

Professional QualificationsAvocat admitted to the Paris Bar

EXPERIENCE

Advising Société Générale as Facility Agent and a pool of 8 lenders in a 150m€ LBO facility for the acquisition by Chevrillon of Koesio Corporate IT.
Advising BNPP as Facility Agent and a pool of 7 lenders in a 107m€ LBO facility for the acquisition by Nextstage of Adopt Parfums.
Advising BPCE as Facility Agent and a pool of 10 lenders in a 150m€ LBO facility for the acquisition by Cerares of Havas Voyages Group.
Advising a pool of 23 banks led by Crédit Industriel et Commercial and Crédit Agricole CIB on the extension and increase of a financing of over one billion euros for Clariane (ex-Korian).
Advising the Pricoa Private Capital debt fund as lender in the EUR70m direct lending LBO financing of Montefiore Investment's acquisition of oXya from the Hitachi group.
Advising the US fund STG Partners as sponsor in the unitranche LBO financing provided by Five Arrows to the Sciforma group for the acquisition of the US group KeyedIn Solutions.
Advising Crédit Agricole CIB and a banking pool on the impact loan financing of the ONV group.
Advising the ID Logistics Group as borrower in a EUR465m financing for the acquisition of the American group Kane Logistics, provided by BNP Paribas.
Advising Crédit Agricole CIB, Crédit Industriel et Commercial, Crédit Lyonnais and HSBC and the pool of banks (more than 30 lenders) on the EUR325m LBO and Incremental financing of the acquisition of the Emera group by Ardian and Naxicap.
Advising Andera for the bond financing of Sogetrel*.
Advising Crédit Agricole CIB for the corporate and SSL financing of the Etam group.
Advising Swissport as borrower on a EUR460m TLB and EUR225m incremental financing*.
Advising Caspar (Hériard-Dubreuil family) as borrower on the EUR385m takeover financing of Onéo by Crédit Agricole and BNP Paribas.

*denotes experience from previous firm.

Languages

AWARDS

Education

Universit Paris 1 Panth on-La Sorbonne (Master de Droit Priv )

Universit Paris 5 (Master 2 de Droit des Affaires internationales)

Universit de Nantes et de Shanghai (Master 2 de Management)

Publications and media

International Debt Finance Intelligence Report 2025, 27 March 2025
International Debt Finance Intelligence Report 2024, 23 April 2024

Prior Experience

Prior to joining AKD Partners, Sophie worked 14 years in the Banking Finance team of a leading international Anglo-American law firm.
She also worked in-house for a client in the corporate finance team of a multinational insurance and investment firm based in Paris.
Sophie has gained experience in international law firms in Paris and Shanghai as well as in the structured finance of a leading international banking institution.