© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.
By Brooks Igo – (Aug. 15) – Corporate finance expert Eric White moved his law practice from Squire Patton Boggs to Dykema Gossett, the firm announced recently. He joins as senior counsel in the Dallas office.
White focuses his practice on business transactions in the areas of domestic and international finance, and he has represented numerous financial institutions in connection with leveraged finance and structured finance deals.
“I included Dykema in my considerations early on as Dykema has a Dallas office with a national portfolio of expertise that really complements my practice,” he said. “Additionally, our current and targeted client lists matched very nicely.”
Bill Finkelstein, the managing member of Dykema’s Texas offices, said adding White is “a feather in our cap.”
“As Dykema Gossett continues to expand its presence in the Texas market, representing financial institutions, as well as borrowers, in loans and as part of M&A transactions is a priority,” he said.
One significant deal White has worked on was for a foreign bank that provided a loan facility and commodity and financial hedges to an oil and natural gas pipeline operator that ultimately branched out into other aspects of trading and managing oil and gas portfolios. The borrower, which had to declare bankruptcy soon thereafter, had three or four credit facilities with several syndicates of financial institutions and many hedges with numerous hedging counterparties.
“Evaluating the positions and priorities of all the other elements of the debtor’s capital structure was very complicated and guiding my client in the positions it should take was challenging when you had literally hundreds of participants in this bankruptcy,” he said.
In another deal, White had a client that was mandated to be the lead agent for a cash flow facility to support a private equity company’s acquisition of a healthcare provider. It was the first time his client was leading a deal for this fund.
“While not the largest deal I have run in terms of dollars, it was one of the most significant because of my client’s trust in me to help them form an excellent first impression with this equity fund,” he said. “I suspect my client will be tapped to be the lead bank for this fund again soon.”
One current trend White is seeing in his corporate finance practice is the continued entry of non-bank commercial lenders into the leveraged finance market. White says published figures and anecdotal evidence indicates these new market entrants have caused other market participants to be more competitive on loan pricing and credit structuring.
In response, White says other lenders have to loosen certain aspects of the deal proposals.
“These pressures are causing a clear set of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the world of providers of capital,” he said. “Some capital providers are adapting to these new circumstances, while others are reevaluating what segments of the leverage finance market they should compete in.”
In addition to his private practice, White has served on the executive board of The Family Place, a non-profit charity in Dallas that serves victims of family violence by providing housing and counseling, building community engagement and advocating for social change.
Dykema’s move to bring on White was announced a couple of weeks after the firm added business litigator
Matthew Rinaldi as senior counsel to its Dallas operation, which now has 23 lawyers. Rinaldi was previously working as a solo, but has experience at Gibson Dunn and K&L Gates.
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