Bingham is one of the nation’s leading firms serving private equity investors, partnerships and funds. Our clients include many of the industry’s most successful sponsors, who rely on us for ongoing advice regarding the development and executive of investment and exit strategies, and the creation of value through acquisitions, divestitures and innovative financing techniques.
The Private Equity Group has extensive experience in the private equity arena and is supported by an infrastructure designed to meet the demands of fast-moving transactions.
Our strengths include:
- The creativity and knowledge provided by our senior and most experienced attorneys who concentrate exclusively in private equity transactions and remain actively involved in all phases of the deals
- The ability to think like a business partner, to evaluate each transaction’s tax, accounting and legal issues within the context of an overall investment strategy; to provide key business and legal advice on the front end; and to structure the deal to achieve our client’s desired goals
- A pragmatic approach that includes viewing legal issues in commercial terms, evaluating the impact of each issue on potential returns on investment, and pinpointing what matters — and what doesn’t — from a financial point of view
- The insight to spot potential roadblocks in advance, and the skill and creativity to either negotiate through them or propose cost-effective alternative approaches
- The technical knowledge to create and implement innovative deal structures that accurately reflect unique terms and complex financial formulas
Our Approach
Bingham attorneys in the Private Equity Group are involved in the full range of private equity and related finance transactions, including serving as both counsel and strategic adviser to a number of sources of private equity capital.
Our representation of private equity firms is characterized by a long-term, strategic advisory approach — our involvement often begins at fund inception long before any individual transaction is contemplated or proposed. We work closely with clients to refine their overall investment and exit strategies and then commit the legal resources required to execute those strategies and to evaluate, structure, negotiate and close their deals. Our attorneys have the experience to serve as business partners and help our clients make the tax, accounting, valuation and other decisions they face.
Financial Engineering
It’s not enough to recognize undervalued businesses or identify unrecognized opportunities. The creation and realization of value requires the ability to plan, manage and execute strategies to achieve target returns while avoiding circumstances that could present barriers to liquidity. We work with our clients, their consultants and their portfolio companies and management teams to devise innovative financial and legal structures to implement their value creation strategies.
We help clients launch successful consolidation strategies, maximize value from the synergies realized in the successful integration of single or multiple follow-on acquisitions and reap advantages in turnaround situations. We structure our clients' investments to obtain the most favorable tax and accounting treatment and to enhance returns. We have extensive experience helping investors realize value from the purchase of family-owned businesses and understand key succession and estate planning issues.
Exit Strategies
At Bingham, we understand the importance of structuring investments at the outset to provide investors with realistic exit strategies. The attorneys in the Private Equity Group have extensive experience in the formulation and implementation of ideas and techniques to enable investors to achieve investment liquidity, including put/call arrangements, forced sale provisions, leveraged recapitalizations, public offerings and private sales.
Our Experience
The firm has worked with leading private equity firms on fund formations, mezzanine and later stage investments, buyouts, roll-ups, buildouts, leveraged acquisitions and recapitalizations. We have assisted our clients with their activities in the United States and around the world.
Our clients include investment banks, private investment firms, private equity firms and the private equity arms of institutional investors. They create value for their investors by providing growth capital to businesses in all stages of development; by partnering with target company management; and through invest and build strategies and strategic acquisitions. Our clients work across all industries, asset classes and geographic categories, but concentrate in the middle market.
The practice group focuses on the representation of buyout firms targeting middle market companies, both U.S. and foreign. The activities of our clients' portfolio companies range from manufacturing, technology, food processing, distribution and retail to the services sector and include such businesses as restaurant chains, packaging companies, investment managers, alarm companies, hardware distributors, executive recruiters, printers, movie theaters and drug stores, and manufacturers of such diverse products as stationery, steel wire, truck bodies, medication carts, foam mattresses, log homes and electrostatic packaging.
In the services it provides to clients, the practice group integrates the knowledge base of the firm’s corporate, tax, debt finance, commercial technology and securities attorneys. Our attorneys have a comprehensive understanding of the complex legal, regulatory and accounting issues that investors encounter in these contexts, and utilize this knowledge to assist our clients to optimize financial and accounting treatment while obtaining favorable tax results.