For regional and national banks with commercial lending business, Farella lawyers offer discrete knowledge and practical experience. Acting for banks as outside-counsel or on a special project basis, we structure and document a range of financial transactions involving businesses, high-net-worth individuals, developers, professional services firms, and others.
Tailored to Your Needs
From the complex to the routine, through the nuances of flexible financings, syndicated loans, term loans, acquisition loans and revolving credit lines, Farella is poised to add value to all client transactions.
Throughout the lending process, we offer our clients high-quality counsel and careful management of available resources. Our lawyers bring acute business acumen and judgement to deals—they know what’s worth fighting for and what’s not. With our knowledge and experience, we know what’s “market,” and can sort out issues relatively quickly and practically. We can make reasonable business calls in grey areas to get deals done without undue expense.
Always mindful of right-sized staffing, our clients receive key partner attention, supported by experienced associates as needed, to create proven efficiencies for banks and their borrowers. Farella also has the ability to be nimble and flexible in fee agreements.
Industry Focus Adds Value
Our industry experience becomes especially valuable in shaping terms and documentation for the needs of banks and their customers in niche industries, including agriculture, dairy, wine, cannabis, energy infrastructure development, professional service firms, private equity and real estate.
Wine Industry and Agricultural Lending
Along the west coast, Farella holds a unique position as one of the foremost advisors to the wine and cannabis industries. From this viewpoint, we are well-equipped to represent lenders to wineries and cannabis operations. In Napa and Sonoma, specifically, we act as outside counsel to the leading winery finance group, documenting financings for family-owned wineries producing high-end wines.
We also work deals for banks lending to large agricultural operations such as dairies and corporate wineries, that provide funding for construction, acquisitions, and operations. In particular, we are frequently engaged to draft complicated syndicated loans or structure operating lines of credit to help growers, producers, and sellers balance seasonal cash flows.
Energy and Infrastructure Finance
Farella’s extensive experience in the energy sector helps our client’s successfully finance energy projects. Farella has a highly collaborative team of attorneys with a diverse set of skills uniquely suited to assist project sponsors throughout the project development finance process. We help clients ensure that their key project agreements (e.g, real estate, permitting, EPC, interconnection, power sales and financing agreements) are negotiated and drafted in a manner that will ease a sponsor’s way to closing, and help them quickly and efficiently identify and resolve and/or avoid project development issues.
In addition, the firm is often engaged in a specialized counsel role to large infrastructure lenders, who also benefit from our team’s collaborative approach, extensive experience and diverse skill set, and help lenders to deftly complete project diligence review and identify and resolve project contract and financing issues, including related to permitting, siting, title insurance, offtake and interconnection issues.
Bank Litigation and Investigations
We regularly represent regional and national banks and/or their officers and directors in a variety of high stakes litigation matters alleging securities fraud, improper accounting and sales practice, patent infringement, breach of contract and fiduciary duty, as well as insolvency issues. These matters sometimes involve class action and/or derivative claims with parallel governmental investigatory or enforcement proceedings brought by agencies including the SEC, OCC, FDIC or DOJ. We have also conducted internal investigations to identify and address any problems before they lead to protracted litigation.
