Financial Services and Banking
We represent regional and national banks, commercial finance companies, private wealth managers, and investment banking and financial services firms. Representative work includes:
- Providing general representation of one of the Northwest's longest-standing investment advisors pursuing multi-manager domestic and offshore hedge fund strategies
- Representing major lenders in work-outs, real estate-secured financing and conduit financing
- Representing Canadian bank and insurance company lenders in transactions involving U.S. borrowers or borrowers with U.S. affiliates
- Representing numerous financial institutions in complex and routine litigation arising from non-performing loans, including foreclosure, collection, fraud, bankruptcy and related commercial litigation
- Defending a major Northwest bank, and most of its officers and directors, in class actions in Washington and Montana alleging state securities fraud
- Representing a Northwest community bank in complex commercial litigation against two major national banks and a group of customers involving a sophisticated check-kiting scheme
- Representing a state-sponsored health care finance authority in a test case to the Washington Supreme Court regarding whether the authority's issuance of tax exempt bonds violated prohibitions against certain uses of public money in Washington Constitution
- Defending a corporate trustee in a securities fraud class action alleging that our client improperly acted as the indenture trustee of a $20 million municipal bond offering by a sewer district in Island County
- Representing a municipal bond insurer in prosecuting securities fraud claims arising out of misrepresentations made by the underwriter and others in obtaining municipal bond insurance in connection with a $31 million conduit bond financing for a parking garage
- Providing employment and benefits advice and litigation support to investment banks and financial services firms in courts and NASD arbitrations
- Representing clients in responding to regulatory and criminal investigations, including representing a private wealth manager in a NASD investigative interview and representing a national bank in responding to a federal grand jury subpoena
- Representing a major regional bank in loan, work-out, employment and real estate matters, and in matters related to its acquisition of assets of a failed Pacific Northwest bank
- Representing rating agencies, underwriters, trustees, and other participants in securities fraud class actions
- Representing clients in FINRA customer and industry disputes
- Representing a municipal bond insurer in prosecuting securities fraud claims arising from a failed $25 million bond issuance for a college
- Representing national trust institutions in Northwest, including judicial and nonjudicial resolution of trust disputes