PRACTICE

Banking and Financial Services

Overview

The Banking and Financial Services Practice Group (“BFSPG”) consists of a team of seasoned advisors and counselors who regularly represent our financial institution clients in all aspects of transactional, corporate, regulatory, supervisory and enforcement investigations, litigation, risk management, cryptocurrency, and lending and financing transactions.

  • Full Spectrum of Business Transactions

    Like traditional large law firms, we regularly assist clients in the full spectrum of business transactions and related company matters, a large portion of which involves mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, banking and credit, employment, regulatory, corporate governance and board advisory, intellectual property, and financial restructuring and reorganization, among others.

  • Leveraging Technology

    Our Corporate team leverages cutting edge technology in all aspects of practice and our diverse all-partner teams focus on what matters most to our clients and stakeholders, delivering outcomes through shared values of strength, diversity, and collaboration.

  • Forging Close Partnerships

    We believe in forging close partnerships with our clients to better understand their business operations, enabling us to provide more effective counsel and to deliver exceptional value during pivotal moments that often shape profoundly the trajectory and success of our clients’ businesses.

  • Effective Low-Leverage Platform

    Our unique low-leverage platform is not only more cost-effective, it allows us to focus on fewer, targeted engagements than our peers at traditional, elite law firms. This model allows us to get closer to our clients and to know their businesses, preferences, and cadence, and to ultimately meet our clients where they are.

Capabilities

The BRSPG advises clients in domestic and cross-border debt financings including structuring, negotiating and documenting private and public finance debt capital raises, assisting with regulatory compliance, and the enforcement of rights in the event disputes arise. Our BFSPG attorneys work closely and seamlessly with attorneys in other practice areas to advance our clients’ objectives. For example, the BFSPG routinely cooperates with: the M&A Practice Group to assist with acquisition financings and strategic transactions; the Real Estate Practice Group to assist with real estate acquisitions and divestitures; the Fintech and Block Chain Practice Group to assist with structuring and documenting online lending platforms and cryptocurrency matters; and the IP Practice Group, when intellectual property is being financed or pledged as collateral for a loan.

Our clients include commercial banks and credit unions and private lenders (hedge funds, PE firms, and family offices), public and private borrowers, debt issuers in various industries, underwriters, and institutional agents in myriad debt financings ranging from one-on-one unsecured private loan transactions to syndicated credits arranged for publicly-traded borrowers.

With deep experience in all aspects of securing a borrower’s obligations under a credit facility, BFSPG lawyers regularly assist lenders, borrowers, pledgors, and other participants in debt transactions in collateralizing the underlying obligations. Forms of such collateral routinely includes mortgages or deeds of trust on real property under local law, traditional types of personal property under the Uniform Commercial Code such as accounts receivable, equipment, and inventory, as well as more inchoate forms of collateral, such as intellectual property rights arising from patents, trademarks and copyrights, and financial assets and deposit accounts.

Our BFSPG financial institution regulatory partners assist and advise our clients on all aspects of regulatory, corporate, and transactional matters, from formation, capital raises, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory, banking operations, vendor contracts, data security, employment, to board and shareholder issues. The BFSPG includes a deep and experienced group of litigators who regularly assist our financial institution clients.

Partners in the BFSPG have held senior positions in the General Counsel’s Office of local, regional, superregional and money center banking institutions, state and federal bank regulators’ offices, other federal regulatory agencies, and as private attorneys acting as outside counsel for financial institutions.