John M. Brandow

John is chairman of our Derivatives & Structured Products group and a partner in our Capital Markets practice. He advises a wide variety of market participants – commercial and investment banks, issuers and institutional holders of equity positions – on a complex array of equity-related transactions.
John has been actively involved in the design of exchangeable securities containing imbedded options or forward contracts on the underlying equities, the development of mandatory and optional convertible securities issued in capital-raising transactions, the evolution of call spread transactions used to change the economics of convertible securities, and the structuring of public and private hedging transactions using collars and variable prepaid forward contracts. He has also represented major financial institutions on syndicated margin loans, including multi-billion-dollar cross-border deals.
Chambers USA ranks John in Band 1 for derivatives work.
Experience highlights
Notable Matters
- SoftBank $20 billion monetization of its T-Mobile shareholdings
- $690 million 2020 Mandatory Exchangeable Trust securities offering
- Trip.com $500 million exchangeable senior notes offering
- Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings $862.5 million exchangeable notes offering
- $8 billion margin loan to a subsidiary of SoftBank, secured by Alibaba ordinary shares
- $6 billion margin loan to a subsidiary of Northstar, secured by Alibaba ordinary shares
- Advice to a major airline on its $2.8 billion payroll support made available by the United States Department of the Treasury pursuant to the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021
- A GSE on its conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)
- Morgan Stanley on various financial crisis-related matters, including the mandatorily convertible securities Morgan Stanley issued to CIC and the convertible preferred stock Morgan Stanley issued to MUFG
- NY Fed and US Treasury in connection with the reorganization of AIG
Insights
Credentials
Recognition
Education
- cum laude
- Articles Editor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review
- Pembroke College
- cum laude
Clerkships
Professional history
- Partner, 1989-present
- Associate, 1981-1989
Qualifications and admissions
- State of New York