Sarah Smit is a legal consultant at Trinity International LLP. She is a banking and finance lawyer, with over 20 years’ experience in developed and emerging markets, development and sustainable finance, trade finance and leveraged and acquisition finance.

After training with Allen & Overy in London and Hong Kong, Sarah qualified in 2003 into the Global Loans & Restructuring team at Allen & Overy. She moved to Amsterdam in 2005, joining Linklaters’ Banking and Finance team, focusing on European leveraged acquisition finance and syndicated lending and advised European banks, European public and private corporations and private equity investors. Sarah is a fluent Dutch speaker.

Most recently, Sarah was Deputy Chief Legal Officer for British International Investment plc (formerly CDC Group plc), the UK’s development finance institution. She advised on a breadth of secured and unsecured emerging markets financings for corporates, banks and microfinance institutions, on a bilateral and syndicated basis with other DFIs and commercial lenders. Sarah has extensive experience in sustainable finance, climate finance and gender lens investing, principally Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, covering early-stage deal structuring, transaction execution and portfolio management. Sarah’s trade finance experience includes trade loans and de-risking transactions (funded and unfunded participations).