Career Development Fellow in Law
St Hugh’s College Oxford OX2 6LE
Office at 78 Woodstock Road
Telephone: 01865 284454

Email: rafal.zakrzewski@law.ox.ac.uk
Law Faculty Webpage: http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/profile/rafal.zakrzewski
Oxford Law Faculty: http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/

The principal areas in which I teach are contract, torts, trusts and corporate finance.  My principal research interests lie in the areas of finance law and commercial remedies.  I am particularly interested in the relationship between legal principle and commercial practice.  My current focus is on all aspects of English law relating to corporate lending and security, particularly in an international or cross-border context.  I am participating in The Cape Town Convention Academic Project, a joint undertaking between the University of Washington School of Law and the University of Oxford Faculty of Law concerning the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment (the Cape Town Convention).  I am also participating in the Secured Transactions Law Reform Project.  Its aim is to consider the need for reforming the law relating to secured transactions in England and Wales.

I undertook my undergraduate studies at the University of Queensland in arts (majoring in philosophy supplemented by a mix including maths, computer science and economics) and in law.  I was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1999.  After some time in practice at a leading Australian firm I came to Oxford to read for my doctorate at Linacre College and Lincoln College.  My doctorate, written under the supervision of Professor Peter Birks, focused on the concept of a legal remedy and the taxonomy of private law remedies.

After completing my DPhil, I was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales and commenced to work for Clifford Chance LLP in the City and later at Canary Wharf.  I worked primarily in the areas of structured trade finance and general syndicated lending with a focus on emerging markets.  I acted for banks providing funding to borrowers located in places as diverse as Finland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Romania, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Ethiopia, Israel and Switzerland.

I later moved to Poland, the country of my birth, where I ultimately headed up the English law desk of the banking and finance department of Clifford Chance, Warsaw.  I regularly represented lenders and borrowers in finance transactions with a focus on corporate finance, real estate finance, acquisition finance and project finance.  I also acquired significant experience relating to joint ventures between institutional investors and local partners and M&A transactions, in many and varied sectors.  Some of the more significant recent transactions that I conducted included flagship loans to publicly listed companies such as a EUR 1,600,000,000 loan facility for an oil company or a CHF 800,000,000 loan facility for a bank, commercial bank guarantees of credit lines provided by the European Investment Bank for the development of major projects (tram system, power station, major packaging plant), project finance of a 120MW wind farm, joint ventures in respect of significant commercial real estate developments (residential, retail, logistics), and advice in respect of the acquisition of companies (manufacturing companies, banks).  I regularly presented on recommended form Loan Market Association finance documentation.  I continue to consult for Clifford Chance.

Apart from my years in commercial practice, I have also served as assistant parliamentary counsel with the United Kingdom Parliamentary Counsel Office.  I worked on the Companies Act 2006, the Terrorism Act 2006, the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 and the Legal Services Act 2007.  I also assisted with the implementation of EU directives including the transparency obligations directive and the takeovers directive.

I took up my post at St Hugh’s College in January 2011. 

PUBLICATIONS

Books

The Law of Rescission (with D. O'Sullivan and S. Elliott) (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008).
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199250110.do

Remedies Reclassified (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005). http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199278756.do

Chapters

Poland chapter in International Acquisition Finance (with J. Zdzienicki) (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010).
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199579709.do

Poland chapter in Doing Business in Europe (Sweet & Maxwell, London, 2005).

Articles

‘Material adverse change and material adverse effect provisions: construction and application’ (2011) 5 Law and Financial Markets Review 344.

‘The Nature of a Claim on an Indemnity’ (2006) 22 Journal of Contract Law 54.

‘The Classification of Judicial Remedies’ [2003] Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly 477.

‘Lender Beware: Is there a Benefit to the Beneficiaries of the Trust?’ (1999) 10 Journal of Banking and Finance Law and Practice 69.

‘The Law relating to Single Director and Single Shareholder Companies’ (1999) 17 Company and Securities Law Journal 156.

Reviews and notes

Review of ‘Unjust Enrichment and Public Law’ (2011) 6 British Tax Review 716.

Contribution to 1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die (Cassell Illustrated, London, 2010).

Review of ‘The Future of Remedies in Europe’ (2002) 10 Restitution Law Review 241.