Avi is counsel in Reed Smith’s New York office and a member of the Firm’s Financial Industry and Investment Management Groups. Avi focuses his practice on corporate transactions involving private investment funds, registered investment companies, investment advisors, institutional investors, asset managers, liquidators, boards of directors and committees thereof, and valuation agents.
Prior to joining Reed Smith, Avi served as in-house counsel to KBC Financial Products. During that time, his transactional experience included hedge fund financing; all aspects of alternative investment structuring, negotiation and documentation; asset sales and purchases; secured and unsecured lending; distressed debt and claims trading; structured credit; and negotiated workouts with counterparties. Most recently, he was responsible for the legal aspects of deleveraging, terminating, and otherwise monetizing all remaining businesses and assets for this complex financial organization. As part of this divestiture, Avi developed and executed a legal strategy for the workout and ultimate sale of a $5 billion portfolio of hedge fund investments collateralized by a wide range of asset-backed loans and structured assets.
Before joining KBC Financial Products, Avi worked as a structured finance banker at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., where he structured and originated collateralized debt obligations. Prior to that role, he was a corporate associate at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, representing institutional clients in various financing arrangements, private placements, securitizations and collateralized debt obligations.
