Finance & Restructuring

Our deals frequently involve the retail sector, where we have one of the largest practices in the country. We serve as lead counsel to lenders in many of the most high-profile consumer products and retail loans and bankruptcies in the world. This includes a broad range of financing transactions for retailers, including multi-tranche and split collateral debt financings, leveraged buyout and leveraged recapitalization transactions and debtor-in-possession financing. 

Choate has one of the nation’s leading sports financing practices, serving as lead counsel to financial institutions in franchise loans to MLB, the NHL, the NBA, the NFL and MLS teams, special purpose loans to individual leagues and their financing affiliates, and to teams in connection with stadium construction projects, including in Atlanta, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Arlington, Texas, among others.

We counsel clients in highly specialized mezzanine debt transactions involving a wide variety of securities and issuers, ranging along the risk/return spectrum from venture capital financing for start-up entities to later-stage equity transactions and transactions for more established private and public companies.

We advise senior, first-lien, mezzanine, and second-lien lenders and equity sponsors and issuers in acquisition and recapitalization financings involving a range of US domestic and international industries. We are particularly strong in the middle market, where our finance and restructuring and private equity teams work together to represent borrowers, lenders and private equity sponsors and venture fund clients in heavily negotiated, complex transactions throughout the capital structure.

From troubled public companies and international insolvencies to failed start-ups, we work with debtors, creditors and equity sponsors in high profile and middle-market restructurings and bankruptcies. Our team’s reputation with financial institutions has enhanced our ability to work effectively with distressed companies in the most difficult stages of loan restructurings. We also have deep experience representing buyers and sellers of distressed businesses and assets, either through a §363 sale process in bankruptcy or an out-of-court transaction.

Our asset-based lending practitioners possess a deep understanding of the industry’s products and practices, in the US and around the world. Our experience includes structuring and executing transactions, working out and restructuring problem credits, and enforcing creditors’ rights in a wide range of industries, including manufacturers, distributors and transportation companies.

We have significant experience representing and counseling commercial banks, underwriters, and issuers in the capital structures and needs of the ever-evolving healthcare industry.

We combine our deep focus on finance with decades of experience structuring transactions and counseling issuers and underwriters on finance, 34 Act compliance and taxation matters in the utilities industry. We have specific experience advising issuers and underwriters on public, private and tax-exempt financing transactions for investor-owned, municipal-owned, and member-owned electric, gas and water utilities.

Our real estate practice works on an interdisciplinary basis with our nationally-recognized Finance and Restructuring team to advise lenders, investors, owners and developers on distressed real estate transactions, including acquisitions and sales, loan workouts and bankruptcy and restructuring strategies. Our practice is national and involves virtually every asset class.