Linklaters and Clifford Chance (CC) have taken lead roles on the Royal Bank of Scotland's £4.7bn mortgage-backed securities sale, in one of the first issuances of its kind since the recession hit.

CC acted for RBS with a team including banking and finance partners Kevin Ingram and Emma Matebalavu, while New York capital markets partner Lewis Cohen advised on US law.

Linklaters advised the arranging banks – which included Lloyds and JP Morgan – with a team led by City capital markets partner Anne Hoe alongside New York capital markets partner Gary Barnett.

Hoe said: "Working on this has been particularly interesting because it is the first such securitisation by RBS coming to the market since the financial crisis, and shows that the market is opening up again. Hopefully this means that other issuers will be able to follow suit."

CC's Ingram added: "The interesting thing at the moment is looking at how the new post-credit crisis securitisation market is developing.

"There has not been a lot of securitisation issuance into the investor market in the past few years. This is a new style stand-alone residential mortgage backed security (RMBS) issuance and I would expect in the near term that there will be further stand-alone RMBS issuance if this is received as well as anticipated."

A spokesman for RBS said the bonds being issued were backed by high-quality RBS and NatWest mortgages.

"There have not been the investors out there who have been interested in securitisation, but now they are again," the spokesman said.