Clifford Chance adds cat bond expertise to structured finance team

Global law firm Clifford Chance has added a newly hired team to its structured finance practice, bringing with it a wealth of securitization experience including specific expertise in catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS).

Clifford Chance is already well-known within the ILS and reinsurance space, as a global law firm with expertise in areas such as catastrophe bonds, ILS, collateralized reinsurance, value-in-force life deals and derivatives, providing transactional advisory, dispute services, financing support and advice, as well as advising on regulatory and commercial matters.

So Clifford Chance has hired a team of five lawyers from Bingham McCutchen, led by partners Robert J. Gross and William Cejudo, all of whom will be based at the firm’s Washington office. The hired team brings additional expertise to the Clifford Chance U.S. structured finance team.

Cejudo in particular has experience in the tax issues associated with catastrophe bonds, other types of asset backed securitization and structured finance transactions. He previously worked in the Financial Institutions and Products Division of the IRS Office of Chief Counsel, where he focused on tax-exempt and taxable financings and other financial products.

Gross meanwhile has advised investment banks, hedge funds, issuers, sellers, purchasers, investors, servicers and monoline insurers on a wide array of structured and asset-based financings, including publicly registered and privately placed securitizations and re-securitizations

The other three team members to move over with Gross and Cejudo are Robert Patrick Hagan, Leah K. Willmore and John J. Lust, all of whom have experience across many securitized asset classes and financings.

“The Clifford Chance platform presents an exciting opportunity for us to join a firm with one of the top structured finance practices in the United States as well as an unparalleled global network,” commented Gross. “It is a combination that I believe will be invaluable to our clients and we can’t wait to get started.”