Private Equity & Venture Capital

The financial services industry is complex, dynamic, and intensely regulated, but offers substantial rewards for private equity and venture capital firms, investment companies, and other financial sponsors. Exploring opportunities in mortgages, fintech, auto finance, consumer finance, specialty finance, marketplace lending, payments and digital commerce, and other emerging financial services areas requires legal counsel with deep industry experience that is attuned to the particular challenges these investors face in entering a regulated industry.

Buckley’s roots are in financial services, and we rely upon our transactional, regulatory, enforcement, and litigation experience to help investors anticipate and avoid potentially catastrophic risks, enabling them to make, restructure, or re-price deals that allocate risk appropriately.

Our Private Equity team guides clients through the full array of acquisition transactions from start to finish. We assess secular risks at the targeting stage, perform regulatory due diligence, structure transactions, and negotiate relevant agreements and necessary contractual protections. We help close deals by obtaining regulatory consents and managing pre- and post-closing regulatory compliance enhancements to resolve or mitigate deficiencies identified during due diligence. We also work with financial sponsors and portfolio companies during the life of the investment to manage risk at the operational level as well as across investment platforms, helping our clients monitor and control regulatory, legal, and reputational risks. We frequently work closely as co-counsel with regional, national, and international law firms throughout the life cycle of a transaction.

Representative engagements include:

• Negotiated acquisitions and sales of numerous lenders and servicers, and related platforms on both the buy and sell side
   
• Advised on the acquisition of one of one of the world’s largest payment processors
   
• Advised on the acquisition and recapitalization of a major money services company
   
• Assisted a private equity firm in the analysis of licensing laws that apply to various activities, including commercial loan brokering, origination, servicing, and purchasing
   
• Advised a private equity company on the potential acquisition of an ancillary products provider, including full state analysis and change-in-control requirements for compliance
   
• Conducted regulatory due diligence, provided transactional advice, and coordinated the state regulatory filings in a private equity-backed acquisition of a real estate services company
   
• Assisted multiple private equity firms implement roll-up acquisition strategies, assisting with regulatory due diligence, regulatory consents, and reorganizations to build at scale various consumer financial services firms, including mortgage companies, specialty finance companies, and collection agencies
   
• Assisted an investment firm with a late-stage equity investment in a major fintech consumer lending and banking services platform, which included running due diligence and obtaining regulatory consents
   
• Advised private equity firms to walk away from several transactions where due diligence identified serious compliance deficiencies that presented material financial, legal, and reputational risks