New York and Washington, DC-Paul Hastings LLP, a leading global law firm, announced today that two leading Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLO) and Structured Finance partners will join the firm, as it continues to bolster its Finance and Corporate practices across key markets in the United States, as well as in London and Hong Kong. Scott Faga and Eugene Ferrer join the firm from Ashurst LLP, where Mr. Faga was Global Co-Head of the Securities and Derivatives Group and Mr. Ferrer was Managing Partner for the U.S. offices. Mr. Faga is based in Washington, DC, and Mr. Ferrer is based in New York, and join Paul Hastings with a highly experienced team of lawyers including Nicole Skalla and Brian Whaley.
The CLO market has rebounded since 2012 with the U.S. CLO market reaching $125 billion in 2014, surpassing its pre-crisis record of $97 billion and highlighting the remarkable recovery from a crisis low in 2009 when issuance was $3 billion. Scott and Eugene’s team serve as principal counsel to a number of leading CLO arrangers and in 2014 were involved in representing the arranger or collateral manager in over $25 billion of U.S. CLO issuance.
“The revitalization of the CLO market in the U.S. offers significant opportunity for our clients and for growth of our Finance practice,” said Elizabeth Noe, chair of the Corporate practice at Paul Hastings. “Scott and Eugene’s arrival will enable to us provide market leading expertise to help our clients take advantage of the resurgence, while also serving our strategy to continue to strengthen our offerings in our key markets and practice areas across our Corporate practice,” she added.
“Scott and Eugene come to us with impressive clients and experience that will be complementary to our growing London securitization group,” said Charles Roberts, a London-based partner with Paul Hastings. “In particular, we have seen significant demand for securitization regulatory expertise, including risk-retention advice, for securitization transactions that are offered in both the U.S. and Europe and believe the addition of this team will help us to capitalize on this need,” he added.
“Across industries and markets, Paul Hastings has built a finance powerhouse that is attuned to the business needs of our clients,” said Jennifer Yount, chair of the Finance and Restructuring practice at Paul Hastings. “Scott and Eugene are accomplished practitioners who have built a CLO and Structured Finance practice that will further augment the firm’s finance offerings to both our bank and non-bank lender clients in the U.S. and Europe,” she added.
Mr. Faga’s practice covers securitization and structured finance. He represents underwriters and collateral managers in collateralized loan obligation transactions and represents banks and other financial institutions in connection with a variety of structured finance and regulatory matters. Mr. Faga also represents investment banks and others in connection with credit derivative and other swap transactions and distressed asset workouts.
Mr. Ferrer’s practice also focuses on securitization and structured finance, with a particular emphasis on structured credit products and collateralized loan obligation transactions. He represents investment banks, financial institutions, investment advisors, issuers, investors and end-users involving a broad range of securitized financial products.
Paul Hastings has quickened the pace of lateral hiring in 2015. With the arrival of Mr. Faga and Mr. Ferrer, the firm will have added more partners to date in 2015 as were added in all of 2014. The firm recently announced the hires in London of Leveraged Finance partner Luke McDougall, and Private Investment Funds partner Duncan Woollard. In Chicago, Chris Dickerson and Matt Murphy, joined the firm’s Restructuring and Bankruptcy practice in May. In Hong Kong, Mergers and Acquisitions and Private Equity partners Douglas Freeman and Victor Chen recently joined. In New York, Global Project Finance chair Robert Kartheiser; Latin America and Capital Markets partner Cathleen McLaughlin; New York Mergers and Acquisitions chair, David Shine; and Mergers and Acquisitions partner, Samuel Waxman have joined in the past couple of months.
Source: www.paulhastings.com
