Mr. Smith has significant experience advising Japanese companies and companies transacting business in Japan on corporate (mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, cross-boarder transactions) and insolvency-related litigation matters.

Mr. Smith has significant experience representing clients in emerging markets on issues related to project finance, privatization, regulatory reform, sovereign debt and financial restructuring.

Relevant Experience

• Regularly represents debtors, secured and unsecured creditors, bondholders, lessors, equity interests and trustees in connection with U.S. and international/cross-border restructurings, workouts, Chapter 11 bankruptcies (pre-packs, reorganizations and liquidations), Chapter 15 cross-border bankruptcies, SIPA proceedings, the exercise of creditor rights and crisis management.
• Cross-discipline industry advice includes airline, automotive, biotechnology, energy (traditional and renewable), financial services, leisure, manufacturing, retail and telecommunication.
• Regularly provides insolvency-related transactional structuring advice for complex capital market transactions, including the creation of special purpose vehicles (SPVs) and liquidating trusts to administer dissolution of corporate entities, unwinding of transactions and the distribution of liquidation assets.
• Regularly represents purchasers and sellers of assets in Chapter 11 bankruptcies through "Section 363" sales.
• Negotiates and issues legal opinions to U.S. nationally recognized statistical credit rating agencies on bankruptcy, FDIC, and insolvency issues, including substantive consolidation, true sale/true lease, FIRREA, preference and security interest.
• Negotiated transfers of servicing rights for billions of dollars of mortgage loans on behalf of master servicers, indenture and securitization trustees and custodians in connection with U.S. and foreign insolvencies of commercial and residential mortgage loan originators and seller/servicers.
• Regularly represents Japanese companies on full range of corporate and insolvency-related issues, including a Global 10 Japanese company and its "group" companies and leading Japanese financial and industrial companies.
• Represented the Government of Georgia in the creation of a debt management agency to restructure energy sector debt as a precursor to privatization.
• Resident in Ukraine advising the Government of Ukraine on the privatization of energy sector assets, energy sector wholesale market design, and the restructuring of related sovereign/parastatal debt.
• Represented the Government of Tanzania-owned Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) in an international arbitration with a power sector developer, including the evaluation of sovereign and TANESCO debt, contractual default and related insolvency issues.
• Advised USAID and the Governments of Eastern Europe, including Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Romania, and Ukraine on regulatory reform issues, including developing laws creating independent energy regulatory agencies that are compliant with the relevant Directives of the European Union and addressing issues facilitating private investment through reform of sovereign debt issues.
• Represented the governments of Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Bangladesh and/or parastatal entities in public/private sector transactions, including financings, corporatizations and financings, privatizations, the development and negotiation of asset transfer agreements, debt agreements, multilateral credit enhancement and currency convertibility agreements.

• Law Clerk, the Hon. David H. Adams, United States Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Norfolk Division

• Member, American and Virginia Bar Associations
• Member, American Bankruptcy Institute
• Member, INSOL

• J.D., University of Richmond School of Law, 1997
  
• B.A., Washington and Lee University, cum laude, Journalism and East Asian Studies, 1991
  

• Japanese