Financial Institutions

With eight offices in five states through the Southeast, Stites& Harbison maintains a broad financial institutions expertise. We provide a comprehensive range of regulatory, transactional and litigation services to our financial institutions clients, including banks, thrifts, securities firms, insurance companies and other financial services companies. Our services include regulatory advice, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, lending, bond financing, leasing, loan syndications, commercial finance, secured transactions, creditors’ rights, bankruptcy, and litigation.

Regulatory and Transactional Matters

We regularly advise and represent financial institutions on a broad range of regulatory matters, including representation of financial firms and their officers and directors before federal and state regulatory authorities, consulting with management and boards of directors on the implementation of new regulations, assistance with compliance issues, and corporate governance matters. Our attorneys guide clients in their relationships with customers and in their activities as lenders, underwriters, investment and merchant bankers, broker/dealers, placement agents and advisors in complex public and private financial transactions.

Our experienced transactional and financial institutions attorneys provide advice and assistance to clients on a broad range of subjects, including the chartering of new banking organizations, the expansion of regulated banking and non-banking activities, branch acquisitions and divestitures, mergers and acquisitions, ownership succession, business planning, capital raising transactions, and securities law compliance.

Commercial Finance

Stites & Harbison has extensive commercial finance experience. Over the past 30 years, the firm has represented every major commercial bank in Kentucky and middle Tennessee, many Georgia-based and other money-center and regional banks, and a number of insurance companies. Our attorneys have handled all kinds of financing transactions, ranging from small-ticket lease programs and small business loans to sophisticated, complex structured financing transactions such as syndicated credit facilities, synthetic lease transactions, securitizations, tax-exempt bond financing, tax increment financing, tax credit financing and other creative financing arrangements.

Our experience also includes leveraged equipment financing, vendor financing programs, project financing, conduit lending, mortgage warehouse lending, leveraged acquisition lending, leveraged employee stock ownership plan loans and a variety of asset-based loan transactions with collateral ranging from traditional accounts receivable and inventory to more specialized property like equine bloodstock, hospital and nursing home assets, music portfolios, mobile kitchens, fleets of mobile offices, aircraft, barges, rolling stock, securities and investment property, agricultural installations, telecommunications networks, all kinds of capital manufacturing equipment and titled motor vehicles.

Lending

We counsel large and small lenders in structuring, negotiating, documenting and recovering a wide variety of commercial, real estate and consumer loans and other credit transactions. We also represent borrowers and other parties involved with these transactions.

Our practice includes syndicated and participated multi-lender structures, factoring, leasing, bond financings and asset transfer transactions, such as securitizations. We are also experienced in a variety of strategies used in both the initial structuring and recovery of debt capital transactions.

Our commercial lending attorneys assist with unsecured lending and lending secured by a wide range of collateral types, while our real estate lending practice experience includes acquisition, construction, development, permanent and refinancing loans for all types of commercial properties. For consumer loans, we assist clients with drafting and enforcing loan documents used in consumer transactions.

Experience:

  • Counsel large and small lenders, including banks, insurance companies, commercial finance companies, investment funds and private capital sources.
  • Assist with mezzanine lending, equity participations and other hybrid/debt equity strategies.
  • Assist with commercial lending secured by a wide range of collateral types, including accounts receivable, health care accounts receivable, inventory, equipment, software, entertainment assets, copyrights, patents, trademarks, private and public equity interests, and aircraft.
  • Provide counsel for real estate lending, including acquisition, construction, development, permanent and refinancing loans for all types of commercial properties.

Litigation

Stites & Harbison’s financial institutions and subprime litigation group includes lawyers across the firm’s diverse practice groups and geographic locations. Lawyers with experience in banking litigation defense, business and real estate litigation, bankruptcy, title insurance defense, capital markets issues, white collar crime, securities and financial services litigation, professional liability defense, local and national regulatory compliance, lender liability, commercial banking litigation, and a variety of other practice areas are ready to serve the unique needs of our financial institution clients. We represent financial institutions of all sizes — from international mortgage lenders and servicers to small town state banks — in connection with a full spectrum of litigation and adversarial matters encountered in the modern financial environment.