Banking and Financial Services
Shipman’s banking and financial services team provides sophisticated advice to market-leading multinational, money-center, regional banks, community banks, bank holding companies, commercial financial institutions, and other lenders. Our lawyers have extensive experience structuring, negotiating and documenting a wide range of sophisticated, multimillion-dollar commercial, real estate, asset-based, and other financing transactions.
Our approach is practical, solution-oriented and business-savvy. Whether counseling banks and financial-services clients with respect to general project finance matters, preparing appropriate documentation, concluding large permanent, construction or term loans, lines of credit, and syndicated and tax-credit financings, or handling distressed assets and transactions, our counsel blends proven best practices with innovative approaches that take into account the practical business aspects from our client perspective as well as and regulatory pressures.
We represent banks and financial institutions in transactions across virtually all industries (including entertainment, environmental, health care and skilled nursing, hotels and hospitality, manufacturing, commercial, industrial and residential multi-family real estate, and retail) and in all major areas of debt and credit financings, mezzanine financing, securitizations and related capital-sourcing matters. Our record of success has helped us establish strong, long-term relationships with numerous of well-known institutions, including Bank of America, M&T Bank and People’s Bank, among others.
As advisors to businesses and lenders alike, our experience in dealing with transactional and securities matters, as well public-private partnerships, workout and restructurings gives us deep insights into the objectives, perspectives and expectations of participants on all sides of a deal. Our collective approach helps us navigate the complexities of the industry by developing and implementing strategies that address all legal intricacies, regulations and developments. We provide clients with full-service solutions, and provide comprehensive advice on complex matters, while staying abreast of emerging legal and business trends that continuously impact the evolving landscape of the financial service industry. Our goal across all industry segments is to minimize disruption to your business and help you mitigate negative impacts on your bottom line.
Commercial Finance
Members of our banking and financial services industry team primarily represent financial institutions and other lenders in various types of financings; as set forth above, as well as loan workouts, loan restructuring; and loan sales. In addition, we represent public and private companies, including businesses that are local, regional, national, and international in scope as borrowers in financing transactions . Our borrower clients include businesses at all stages of development, including startup and emerging companies; closely held and family businesses; middle market companies; quasi-public agencies; and non-profit organizations.
We assist clients in all areas of finance, including:
Corporate Trust
For over 40 years, our Corporate Trust group has partnered with the agency and corporate trust departments of major national banks, trust companies and other financial institutions, counseling them in their roles as indenture trustees, administrative agents, owner trustees, collateral or security agents and escrow agents in a wide variety of performing and defaulted secured and unsecured financing transactions. We routinely work with equity and debt participants across the country and internationally, as well as firms in New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Palo Alto, London and many other cities, in bringing these complex transactions to a successful close, assisting our clients in administering their on-going duties and exercising their rights when defaults occur.
Mezzanine Finance
Across the many industries we service, private equity is often the fuel for growth. Whether launching a start-up, helping a mature company with its capital needs or funding ownership changes, our private equity clients take risks and cause change. For years, we have been part of those efforts.
Our private equity group represents venture capital funds, mezzanine funds, SBICs, hedge funds, corporate and strategic investors, institutional investors, and angel investors.
Public Finance and Municipal Law
Shipman has extensive experience representing state and local government bond issuers, underwriters, borrowers and trustees in public finance transactions. Our lawyers have over 30 years of experience handling matters for these clients involving the issuance of general obligation and revenue bonds and notes, obligations under Connecticut’s Clean Water Fund Program, including drinking water grants and loans, grants and loans from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development for brownfield and other environmental remediation costs, and grant and loans from the Rural Development division of the United State Department of Agriculture for various municipal projects. In connection with these transactions, we routinely draft and negotiate, among other things, bond, note and other loan agreements and documents, bond offering documents, trust indentures, lease purchase agreements, bond purchase agreements, security agreements, guarantees, swap agreements, letters of credit and reimbursement agreements
Real Estate Finance
Lawyers in our real estate finance group assist clients with all their financial transactions related to real estate properties, including acquisition, development, financing, and management of real estate assets and commercial properties. Shipman has extensive, diverse experience in real estate law, with more than twenty-five lawyers in our Hartford, Stamford, Manhattan, and New Haven offices who represent clients in all aspects of real estate law including acquisitions, financing, leasing, eminent domain, land use and environmental due diligence. The real estate finance team, intersects as part of the larger finance group and real estate group, possesses sophisticated knowledge, skill and experience in large, multi-jurisdictional, multi-party, structured transactions across the commercial real estate spectrum, and advises a wide variety of clients in financing, investment, acquisition and restructuring transactions secured by real estate.
Workouts, Restructure and Bankruptcy
Our workout, bankruptcy and creditors’ rights team, consisting of transactional and litigation lawyers, regularly represents creditor clients in all types of workout structures including, some of the country’s largest and most complex workouts, debt restructures and bankruptcies, including contentious proceedings. We represent banks, financial institutions and creditors from across the spectrum in matters involving debtors from the airline, energy, steel, retail, health care and telecommunications industries, among others. The current, volatile economic climate has served to exacerbate the challenges facing debtors and lenders alike; we work proactively to help lenders identify emerging risks associated with specific types of collateral, industries, and emerging bankruptcy and insolvency laws and their impacts on loan terms and documents. Drawing on our experience, legal knowledge and business acumen, we act quickly to establish and solidify clients’ positions among a sometimes lengthy list of creditors, and work tirelessly — inside and outside of the courtroom — to help maximize value and capitalize on opportunities.
