DLA Piper has advised Optima Bank on its inaugural €200m Additional Tier 1 notes issuance in the international capital markets, a transaction that places a Greek financial institution before a deep pool of global debt investors and gives cross-border banking lawyers another live example of post-volatility bank capital raising.
The AT1 Notes have been listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and admitted to trading on the Euro MTF market, carrying a fixed coupon of 6.75%. According to DLA Piper, demand came from more than 150 international institutional investors, with the final order book reaching €2.2bn and the issue more than 11 times oversubscribed.
For Optima Bank, the result supports its funding strategy at a point when European bank capital instruments remain closely watched by investors, regulators and legal advisers following the Credit Suisse AT1 write-down litigation.
The DLA Piper team was led by Orestis Omran, a Litigation and Regulatory partner in Brussels and head of the firm’s Greece Country Group, alongside Louise Hennessey, a Finance and Debt Capital Markets partner in London. Elina Bitzika in Brussels and Krzysztof Stefanowicz in Warsaw also supported the mandate.
The structure of the team matters for law firm management because modern bank capital transactions rarely sit in one practice silo. They require finance, regulatory, listing, disclosure and jurisdictional advice to move together under compressed market windows.
The firm also advised Optima Bank on the first update of its EMTN programme, launched in 2025, including an upsize to €1bn. For solicitors acting for banks and arrangers, that programme work is often as significant as the issue itself: documentation must support repeat access to markets, changing capital needs and investor scrutiny across more than one issuance.
In-house counsel at banks will also read the deal as a reminder that treasury objectives, board oversight, regulatory capital planning and market disclosure need to be aligned before an issuer enters a narrow execution window.
For barristers and disputes lawyers, AT1 instruments still carry a litigation shadow because their loss-absorption terms can become contested when banks come under stress. The same point applies to regulatory lawyers reviewing loss-absorption triggers, investor communications and board minutes before launch.
The professional point is not only that demand has returned for selected issuers, but that legal architecture remains central to investor confidence. Law firms advising banks in 2026 will need to show that capital markets documents, risk factors and governance records are strong enough to withstand both market execution and later regulatory or investor challenge.