Our US-based structured finance team is involved in advising on and developing complex tax-driven products and derivative based transactions, including credit, commodity, equity and insurance derivatives, collateralized debt obligation funds (CDOs), capital raising/arbitrage transactions, securitizations, synthetic securities, repackagings, conduits and future flow transactions.

Many transactions are designed to take advantage of cross-border arbitrages, which require access to corporate, securities and tax lawyers in multiple jurisdictions who are familiar with the latest financial technologies. Likewise, securities are increasingly marketed to investors in multiple jurisdictions, demanding that lawyers quickly and efficiently evaluate the effect of an evolving deal structure on an issuer and the investors in those jurisdictions.

Our lawyers in the US are closely linked to our worldwide structured finance team of over 200 lawyers, allowing them to access the expertise and experience of our lawyers in the European and Asian markets to address the concerns of rating agencies, financial guaranty insurance providers and other institutions that establish the standards applied to transactions around the world. We have advised on transactions involving virtually all significant asset classes.

Recent experience includes advising:

  • Credit Suisse First Boston on a structure that transfers Freddie Mac's exposure to a triple-B layer of default risk on residential mortgage securities to various investment funds through credit derivatives, thereby reducing Freddie Mac's credit risk while increasing its ability to add liquidity to the mortgage market - this transaction was named Derivatives Deal of the Year by Investment Dealers' Digest;
  • Goldman Sachs International on the transfer of credit risk on a $1.4bn high-yield bond portfolio, held by a UK bank, on a partially funded, partially synthetic basis, through Newark CBO;
  • Merrill Lynch on its structured credit products business, including the warehousing of over $5bn of asset-backed securities in anticipation of the issuance of structured securities backed by those securities;
  • Citigroup on a program where Citigroup makes available a committed total return swap facility to counterparties under which each counterparty benefits from managing a portfolio of bank loans that are the subject of the total return swap;
  • International Finance Corporation on participation in structured transactions relating to numerous novel assets, including loans made to computer students in India, weather derivatives in the emerging markets, microfinance facilities in South America, casualty insurance offered to rural co-operatives in China and instruments backing export finance letters of credit issued by emerging markets lenders;
  • Man Group, the world's largest fund of funds manager, as well as various hedge funds, on their derivatives trading activities;
  • Greenwich Capital Markets on the establishment of BDirect Leveraged Private Equity Fund to provide institutional investors in private equity partnerships with a vehicle to reduce their exposure and still maintain 'upside' in their portfolios;
  • Rabobank International on its investment in a mandatorily redeemable preferred equity interest issued by a Scottish limited partnership formed to provide low cost funding for Merrill Lynch's existing liquidity portfolio and capitalized with approximately $5.26bn from subsidiaries of Merrill Lynch and Rabobank International;
  • CDC-IXIS on the creation of liquidity facilities backing a securitization vehicle formed to discount and purchase bankers' acceptances created for the export of products from China; and
  • Credit Suisse First Boston on the issuance by Solstice ABS CBO II of $442m notes and preference shares secured by obligations issued by other CDOs and certain other asset-backed securities.

More information on Freshfields' global structured finance practice.

For more information please contact Brian Rance, US managing partner or Christa Crane, business development manager.

Careers

Information on our US careers

Related Practices

Structured finance

Contacts

More contacts