Danté Adams

The lender’s reset right: change of control in modern exits

Change of control provisions are fundamental to any financing transaction because they afford the lender a right to exit or reset the relationship with a borrower when the ownership and governance assumptions underlying the original underwriting no longer hold. However, financial sponsors have proven successful in diluting this automatic right in recent years and have turned their attention to pushing for portability flexibility. This article compares UK/European and US approaches across loans and high yield bonds, analyses why portability has momentum, and sets out commonly sought solutions that preserve credit protections while mitigating transaction execution risk.