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Willa Cohen Bruckner

Partner


Willa Cohen Bruckner is a partner in the Financial Services & Products Group in the New York office. She concentrates on derivatives, structured products and alternative investments and brings to her practice over 28 years of experience as a financial services attorney. Ms. Bruckner has worked extensively in new product development and in the negotiation and documentation of a wide variety of derivatives, structured products and complex financial transactions. She also assists investors with due diligence review of structured products and alternative investments. Ms. Bruckner works with clients on the preparation and implementation of legal and compliance policies and procedures related to investment and trading businesses. She draws on experience in a broad range of financial transactions, investments and services, including derivatives, structured notes, securitizations, hedge funds and private equity funds, debt financings, investment management, credit support and corporate trust.

Representative Experience

  • Advised multiple institutional investors, hedge funds and corporations on legal issues regarding trading of complex and plain vanilla derivatives transactions and on negotiation of documentation for all derivatives products, repurchase transactions and prime brokerage arrangements.
  • Represented a fund manager in structuring a facility to provide first loss protection, by means of total return swaps, on a dynamic portfolio of assets warehoused for securitization.
  • Represented hedge funds in structuring and negotiating trading platforms for synthetic positions in distressed debt.
  • Advised a leading renewable energy company on structuring and documenting wind derivatives as part of long term financing transactions.
  • Analyzed, for a major global investment bank, the effect of counterparty default across the full range of trading with dealer counterparties.
  • Advised leading issuers of structured products on equity-linked and index-linked products.
  • Representation of various derivatives counterparties with aggregate exposure in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in excess of $1 billion.
  • Advised a commodities broker in review and overhaul of documentation for all derivatives trading.
  • Advised a seller of protection in terminating credit default swaps with aggregate notional amounts exceeding $7.5 billion, involving novel legal and valuation issues and cross-border insolvency issues.
  • Advised trustees of securitizations in connection with defaulted derivatives and related termination.
  • Advised a major institutional investor on cross border netting arrangements involving multiples forms of derivatives.
  • Represented an investor obtaining currency hedging on investment notes through a complex program involving embedded derivatives products.
  • Represented an investor in a dispute regarding a highly structured principal protected hedge fund linked product.
  • Represented a corporate borrower in a £21 million tax dispute involving a complex derivative embedded in a loan structure.


Willa Cohen Bruckner

90 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10016-1387
Phone: 212-210-9596
Fax: 212-922-3896

Education

  • University of Pennsylvania
    (J.D., 1981)
  • Yale University
    (M.A., 1976)
  • University of Michigan
    (B.S., 1975)

Admitted to Practice

  • New Jersey
  • New York