Private Equity Capital Raising and Deployment

What is Private Equity?

Private equity firms are entities formed by investment professionals who deploy capital on behalf of individual and institutional investors including public pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and high net worth individuals. These types of investors can typically commit sizable financial sums for substantial periods of time and often on short notice.

Private equity legal services may include negotiating, structuring and documenting an array of transactions including fund formations, venture capital investments, controls, acquisitions of public and private companies and dispositions of previously acquired companies or investments. In addition to forming investment vehicles, private equity law encompasses a wide range of legal matters for companies owned by private equity firms, known as “portfolio companies.” Private equity clients depend on their legal counsel to assist their portfolio companies with “bolt-on” acquisitions, capital raising transactions, leveraged recapitalizations (often to fund dividend payments,) and dispositions of the portfolio companies or real estate.

Private equity legal services also include representing investment groups in acquisition transactions funded by debt, which are known as “leveraged buyouts.” These transactions can be multifaceted, as, in parallel with the negotiation and documentation of the acquisition transaction itself, the private equity firm concurrently must negotiate and document a complex debt transaction, which can involve multiple lenders and several layers of financing. 

The issues presented to private equity and leveraged buyout lawyers are manifold, and typically arise during the course of fast-moving, highly complex transactions involving numerous counterparties, such as debt financing sources, other equity investors, management and the private equity firm’s own constituents. These transactions can require a working familiarity with corporate law, partnership law, tax, benefits and employment law, environmental, intellectual property and real estate issues in a transactional context, executive compensation and incentive issues, securities law and complex debt financing issues.

Beyond the substantive legal issues that arise, the private equity lawyer must be able to organize, articulate and harmonize multiple parallel work streams, communicate among widely disparate transaction participants (principals, lenders, accountants, investment bankers and transaction counterparties,) and keep all of those pieces on track and coordinated for closing.

Canterbury Law Group as Your Real Estate Litigators

Canterbury Law Group in Phoenix and Scottsdale has deep knowledge and understanding of the private equity industry, which allows us to provide superior legal services for private equity fund managers and their investment activity including funding of real estate sponsors seeking to acquire, entitle, develop and sell local real estate assets.