Derivatives & Structured Products

Amid uncertain markets, leading financial institutions and investors turn to O’Melveny to structure, negotiate, analyze, and document complex derivatives while avoiding legal and regulatory pitfalls.

We appreciate the art of the possible: for bank clients acting as hedging counter-parties to leveraged transactions, for investor clients exploiting opportunities to buy risk or enhance leverage, or for issuers structuring call-spread overlays or stock borrow facilities alongside equity-linked offerings.

Our lawyers understand the factors that drive success in complex financial arrangements:

• We have formed and managed derivatives divisions and trading desks within major banks and helped create many of the instruments now in common use.
• We have decades of experience—as attorneys, bankers, and regulators. Our team includes former senior officials with the US SEC and Department of Justice; former Wall Street investment bankers; former private equity investors; and former managing directors, heads of legal departments, and new products committee members of major international banks.
• Members of our team are active with FINRA and ISDA and maintain strong working relationships with key financial players, regulators, and rating agencies.

In this ever-changing space, we offer experience, speed, proficiency, and sophistication on a global scale.

Strengths

• OTC derivatives
• Structured products
• Esoteric asset classes
• Derivatives litigation
• Insolvency
• Securities enforcement

Capabilities

• New product development and structuring
• Open market and structured repos
• Issuer and sponsor forward transactions
• Hedging of leveraged financings and bond transactions
• Unwinds and roll-over of existing transactions
• ISDA documentation
• Corporate commodity, cross-currency, interest rate, and equity swaps
• Regulatory and trading-related advisory work