Winston & Strawn has bolstered its structured finance practice through the hiring of an experienced partner.
Jeffrey Stern, who was previously at Pillsbury, is now a partner at Winston & Strawn’s office in Manhattan. Stern advises clients on highly sophisticated areas of finance including credit derivatives, structured funds, structured credit facilities, asset-based lending, and crowdfunding. A number of his clients are active in the energy sector.
“I see a lot of finance innovation in the energy space – both traditional and green energy – and even in the mining and natural resources area. There is, in particular, a great deal of ferment on the green energy front, including new developments in solar, wind, and PACE bonds. I, and my new colleagues at Winston, have been very active in those practices,” Stern told IFLR1000.
Stern said that he expects energy to be a growing area of finance, and specifically structured finance, whether cash flow-based or asset-based. Citing work that he has been doing for a client undertaking structured shale oil financings in Texas, Stern said that that type of structured energy finance is an area where both he and the firm have extensive experience.
In spite of his positive predictions, Stern acknowledged that green energy has probably suffered a setback of a year or two, in terms of its development arc, because of how far oil and gas prices have plummeted. This development has changed the economic dynamic for a variety of green energy transactions, he said. Even so, green energy is too important an area not to continue to grow.
Stern identified crowdfunding as another area of real interest for structured finance lawyers.
“Naturally, the big headlines recently have been about the consumer loan business established by crowdfunding platforms like Lending Club and Prosper. But interesting things are happening with the finance of more-complex, esoteric assets within the crowdfunding space, including remarkable growth in real estate crowdfunding, where I have some key clients, and developments in energy, mining and natural resources,” Stern commented.
Stern expects that the CLO market, which he describes as somewhere between mature and esoteric, will be entering a new phase, and that observers can expect to see alternative executions for CLO-like structures along with the traditional offerings.
“New structures are emerging that will allow asset managers to access different funding sources and apply slightly different management characteristics, some beneficial and some not, vis à vis traditional CLO structures,” Stern said.
Stern predicted a transactional surge in one region in particular - Latin America.
“I do believe that we will see the reemergence of structured finance lending in Latin America, in particular because Latin America has become somewhat more capital-constrained recently, due to macro-economic issues, among other things. There will be less traditional finance available in some regions, and I expect structured finance will step in to fill the funding gap,” he added.
Stern holds a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and a B.A. from Harvard College.