Securities Industry. Our firm provides ongoing regulatory, compliance, and transactional legal services relating to all aspects of the securities industry. We represent various securities industry participants, including broker-dealers, investment advisers, mutual funds and their sponsors, investment companies, service providers, and financial services companies. We also serve the regulatory, enforcement, and litigation needs of the securities industry. Our attorneys have experience with diverse, cutting-edge issues that arise from sales and distribution, compliance, and securities litigation. Our integrated approach draws on the collective experience of our business, regulatory, and litigation attorneys.
Insurance Companies. We represent insurance companies before various state regulators and the SEC. We work with our insurance company clients and actuaries to prepare for and conduct mutual fund offerings, variable life insurance and variable annuity products, market-value-adjustment products, indexed products, synthetic annuities, and other innovative products. We provide general capital raising and corporate services to insurance companies. We also represent insurance companies on a full range of legal and regulatory matters regarding the structuring and offering of variable annuity contracts, variable life insurance policies, indexed annuities, contingent deferred annuities, and private placement variable insurance products for bank- and corporate-owned life insurance and individual high net worth markets. We also advise hedge funds and other private investment funds that desire to offer their funds through private placement variable insurance products as underlying investment options.
Community Banks and Financial Institutions. We represent banking and financial institutions in many complex transactions that require high-level skills in areas including banking law, corporate law, federal and state securities laws, and tax law. Our attorneys represent banks and financial institutions before all of the federal banking regulators, including the FDIC, OCC, the Federal Reserve Board, and, in the case of public company clients, the SEC. We also represent these clients before state banking regulators, including those in Georgia and Florida.
Our lawyers advise banks, bank holding companies, and financial institutions in securities transactions, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance matters, corporate financing, and compliance with the rules and regulations of the SEC, various banking regulators, the Internal Revenue Service, and state tax regulators. We represent banks and bank holding companies in both public and private sales of common and preferred stock, debt offerings (secured and unsecured), and other capital raising activities. Our firm also regularly represents its financial service clients in all forms of mergers and acquisitions, including mergers for cash and securities, exchange offers, tender offers, and sales of stocks and assets.
REITs. Our attorneys advise public and private REITs nationally on all REIT-related matters, including REIT formation and the purchase and sale of REIT entities. Our experience includes working with both equity and mortgage REITs. We have represented REITs, other real estate entities, and other capital markets participants in both public and private offerings of debt and equity securities. Each involved specialized disclosure requirements, compliance with specific tax laws and regulations, and Investment Company Act issues. Our REIT team consists of lawyers who served with the SEC in the real estate branch. There, they reviewed registration statements, proxy statements, and periodic reports filed by REITs, real estate limited partnerships, and other real estate financing vehicles.