Steve Clinning

Meet Steve

I am a Director in the Banking team with specialist experience having spent 12 years in the finance industry before deciding to retrain as a solicitor. I qualified in 2002 and have acted on matters across a mix of borrower and lender work. I joined Lawrence Stephens in February 2025, having spent three years at Memery Crystal.

I advise both borrowers and lenders on a range of transactions including general property finance, corporate acquisition work, hotel finance, trading business finance, development finance and asset finance, and have established long-term partnerships with several high-volume lending clients.

The experience I have gained from working for lenders gives me a unique insight into how they approach questions of risk and security. This insight brings an extra dimension to my advice on transactions to both lenders and borrowers and ensures that transactions progress smoothly from instruction through to completion.

I aim to understand and anticipate my clients’ requirements and to develop longstanding relationships with all of them. I always adopt a commercial and pragmatic approach giving sensible advice on often complex transactions.

Experience

• Acting for Octopus in a facility of £60million to finance the acquisition of a potential gigafactory site in Somerset called 'This is Gravity'. A particularly exciting matter as the site has recently been acquired by Jaguar Land Rover/Tata and was featured on BBC News
• Acting for a lender in a £100million+ facility to finance a series of static caravan sites in the West Country and including the funding of an amusement park in Cornwall
• Acting for a borrower in the funding of two hotels in Liverpool and Manchester being funded by HSBC and Lloyds, total debt involved was circa £170million
• Confidential matter acting for a lender on a £26million funding of a large development site in Liverpool. The land in question was split into two parts with the first being used for the construction of a student hall of residence and the second for a boutique hotel
• Acting for a lender in the funding of a site with planning in Swindon involving an advance of £66million, this was the biggest transaction in respect of single asset security for the lender in question.