Milbank's Finance Group specializes in advising clients on a broad array of complex financing transactions in the Lending, Structured Finance, CDO and Private Placement markets. Across this spectrum, the attorneys in the Finance Group combine technical excellence with innovative solutions and client-focused execution to provide our clients with unparalleled service. Building on Milbank's tradition of excellence in the finance area, the attorneys in our Finance Group are consistently at the forefront in working with our clients to develop new structures and products in the constantly evolving, and increasingly complex, financial markets.
Lending
Milbank's Lending practice has long been recognized as one of the leading practices in the market. The Firm's Lending practice draws on an exceptionally deep background in financing and bank regulation, having for generations acted as principal outside legal counsel to some of the world's foremost private and governmental financial institutions. Among the transactions we regularly handle are acquisition financings, hybrid lien loans, secured and asset-based financings, cross-border financings and large investment-grade financings for some of the best-known companies in the world. In addition, the lawyers in our Lending practice work closely with lawyers in our nationally-recognized bankruptcy practice to provide an integrated approach in workouts, restructurings and similar special situation financings.
The Firm has a long history of representing the world's foremost financial institutions in the syndicated loan market. Our regulatory practice works with the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC, and other federal and state agencies. The Firm has worked with the Loan Syndications & Trading Association (LSTA), the leading trade organization for bank lending, on critical issues affecting the lending industry, as well as drafting standard form loan documentation for industry-wide use.
Milbank consistently ranks in the top five on Loan Pricing Corporation's league tables for law firms representing lenders on syndicated loan transactions.
Structured Finance
Milbank's Structured Finance attorneys regularly represent investors, issuers, sponsors, underwriters, structuring advisors and collateral managers in structured finance and securitization transactions throughout the world. Regardless of the party represented, we are routinely involved in the development of structures for esoteric and "off the run" assets that often become the market precedent for subsequent transactions. Due to the breadth of our experience and close working relationship with attorneys in our other market-leading practices (including our bankruptcy, energy and power, transportation and tax practices), we bring to the representation of all parties a special insight into the requirements of participants across the table that enables us to devise creative and cost-efficient solutions to the issues that arise in these complex transactions.
Our preeminence in structured financing transactions is evidenced by our roles in a number of recent mission-critical securitizations, including the securitization aspects in the acquisitions of controlling interests in Chrysler and GMAC.
CDOs
Milbank has been at the forefront of the CDO market since its inception in the late 1980s, and our CDO attorneys in both New York and London regularly represent market-leading arrangers, issuers, derivatives counterparties and collateral managers on CDO transactions. With five partners in New York and two partners in London focused on our CDO practice, and with support of the Firm's U.S., U.K. and German tax partners as well as our regulatory, bankruptcy and litigation attorneys, we have worked on well over a hundred CDO transactions – including many ground-breaking transactions – in the last two years alone.
With a strong emphasis on innovation in the CDO market, our CDO attorneys are adept at the full range of products offered in the CDO market, including market value, cash flow, synthetic and credit opportunity structures. With deep experience with diverse asset classes, from broadly syndicated and middle-market loans to asset-backed securities, distressed debt and distressed asset-backed securities, and our involvement on transactions utilizing innovative liability structures, including commercial paper tranches and conduits, liquidity facilities and synthetic equity tranches, we bring to our clients useful perspective and familiarity with market developments and alternatives in the CDO arena. With our deep bench, extensive experience and multi-disciplinary approach, we are ideally suited to advise on all aspects of CDO transactions, whether structuring new transactions today or working with our clients through difficult periods of market disruption.
Private Placements
Milbank has represented leading U.S. institutional investors in their acquisitions of privately placed debt and equity securities for decades, and has long been recognized as a leader among law firms that regularly serve those making such investments. Milbank financing lawyers have acquired a knowledge base as to the special requirements and preferences of institutional investors, which enables Milbank to bring added value to the structuring, negotiation and consummation of financing transactions on their behalf. And the availability of close support from lawyers in the Firm's tax, ERISA, litigation, real estate, environmental and bankruptcy areas, among others, ensures that all the substantive issues presented by a particular transaction, or transaction structure, can be addressed.
Similarly, this combination of client and substantive expertise has positioned Milbank to bring added value to the representation of issuers of privately placed securities and those structuring and marketing direct placements, including investment banks and other financial advisers and intermediaries.
Milbank is particularly active in the area of cross-border private placement transactions, having closed hundreds of such transactions. The Firm's extensive private placement experience, both in our U.S. and overseas offices, has enabled us to provide valuable services to any participant in such private placements.
Because of the leading positions of the institutions which the Firm regularly represents, Milbank lawyers have time and again been involved in the most novel and challenging transactions which the private placement market has to offer, and have developed a well-deserved reputation for "deal sense" and creative problem solving.