In the highly competitive corporate legal market of Chicago, the latest firm to bolster its banking and finance practice through a lateral hire from a competitor is Mayer Brown.
Frederick Fisher, who was previously a partner at Greenberg Traurig, is now a partner in Mayer Brown’s Chicago office. Fisher advises banks, private equity funds, and corporations on secured and unsecured financings domestically and internationally. His expertise encompasses a wide range of products, tools, and transactions, including leveraged buyouts, DIP financings, dividend recaps, asset-based financings, add-on acquisitions, and franchise financings, among many others.
In a discussion with IFLR1000, Fisher cited Mayer Brown’s sophisticated in banking and finance and its inclusion on banks’ approved counsel list as factors drawing him to the firm.
“We saw, coming out of 2007-2008, that a lot of bankers were looking to control costs. I think they felt that made their bid more competitive as they approached CFOs. Given regulatory and other constraints, leverage and structure has not loosened in bank deals as much as they had in past cycles. I think what you saw was maybe some of the middle-market firms gaining traction on pricing, and some of the larger firms discounting more to get to the same place,” Fisher said.
“But I feel the competing dynamic is that there’s been a flight to quality. We’ve seen a lot of banks, especially, take their approved counsel list and cut it down a bit. That’s been very good for some firms, but obviously bad for others,” he added.
March has been an extremely busy month for Mayer Brown on the hiring front. In Washington, the firm added Rajesh De, former general counsel at the National Security Agency (NSA) and former White House staff secretary and deputy assistant to the president, as a partner in its global privacy and security practice. De practiced law at Mayer Brown prior to his service in the federal government. The firm also expanded its oil and gas transactional capability by snagging Francisco Mendez, ExxonMobil’s former in-house counsel for Latin America, as a partner based in Houston.
Fisher holds a JD from Northwestern University and a BS from Miami University of Ohio.