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Biography
Mark's international business practice emphasizes finance and project development. He has had extensive experience in a broad array of commercial transactions, including structured, project and commercial finance; cash flow monetizations; acquisition, construction, development, management, leasing, and sale of power plants, pipelines, chemical facilities, and commercial real property; partnership and corporate formations; loan and equity syndications; loan restructurings; and workouts. His clients include project developers, commercial banks, insurance companies, energy companies, utilities, hospitals, and individuals. Mark is the head of the firm's Structured Finance Practice Group and a member of the Project Finance and Development Practice Group.
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Representative
Experience
Structured finance
- Represented the lead underwriter in a $749 million public bond offering to securitize an investor-owned utility's stranded costs
- Represented the sponsors in seven credit-linked note transactions covering obligations of the sponsors, swapped by means of derivatives issued by international financial institutions, to provide the swap counterparties with investments having the characteristics of the investment grade public bonds of the sponsors
- Represented the seller of 22 sub-prime loans from borrowers in six industries to a CLO trust that issued eight tranches of investment and below investment grade debt into the 144A capital markets
- Represented an international airline in the synthetic sale-leaseback of domestic landing slots
- Represented a joint venture between an international energy services company and a venture capital group to create a debt fund to lend to U.S. oil field service companies
- Represented a major energy company in the issuance of preferred stock in a tax deconsolidation transaction to take advantage of foreign tax credits on a South American pipeline
- Represented a Fortune 500 company in a commercial-paper-funded, synthetic lease financing of $740 million of pipeline and chemical facility assets
- Represented the agent bank in a synthetic lease financing by an eight-bank syndicate of a coal gasification facility and the restructuring of a synthetic lease of a co-generation facility
- Represented a NYSE company in the forward sale of 350 million shares of its common stock to match employee stock option redemptions
Project finance
- Represented an international pipeline company in a combined commercial bank and capital markets financing of a pipeline serving the Canadian Maritimes provinces and the northeastern U.S.
- Represented an international energy company bidding to develop a gas-processing facility and an independent gas-fired power facility in Vietnam
- Represented the agent bank in providing $133 million project financing and $14.2 million letter of credit support for developer obligations in connection with the development of a 272 MW gas-fired cogeneration facility in Colorado
Commercial finance
- Represented a multinational corporation and its subsidiaries in the sale of $360 million of inter-company cross-border debt to a U.K. commercial bank syndicate
- Represented a Swiss bank in providing revolving, swingline, and letter-of-credit facilities to a major forest products company
- Represented one of Europe's largest financial institutions in acquisitions, dispositions, mortgage loans, securitized commercial paper programs, joint ventures, real estate investments trusts, and debt and partnership restructurings throughout the U.S. and Canada, the total value of which exceeds $1 billion
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Activities and Affiliations
- Vice-Chair: Opinion Letter Project for Adapting the Silverado Accord, State Bar of Texas, 1993-1995
- Member: Silverado Accord Subcommittee, Real Property, Probate, and Trust Section, American Bar Association; Lender's Counsel Group, American Land Title Association (past Secretary, 1988-1991)
- Listed: The Best Lawyers in America in international trade and finance law 2003-2006; "Texas Super Lawyers" in banking, Texas Monthly, 2004 and 2005
- Speaker: Continuing legal education topics for the American Bar Association; State Bar of Texas; various professional groups
- Director: Real Estate Section, Houston Bar Association, 1992-1994; International Association for Learning Disabilities (Chair); The Friends of West University Parks (past Secretary)
- Trustee: The Fay School, 1992-1998 (past Chair, 1993-1994)
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Education and Professional Background
- Dartmouth College, A.B. with highest honors and summa cum laude, 1977 (Phi Beta Kappa)
- Stanford University, J.D., 1980 (Order of the Coif; Associate Editor, Stanford Law Review)
- Law clerk to The Honorable Robert A. Ainsworth, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 1980-1981
- Admitted to practice: Texas, 1980
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