Andrew M. Felner is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group in the firm’s New York office and is a member of the firm’s Private Equity Team. He also serves as the Team Leader of the firm’s Private Wealth Services Team. Mr. Felner’s practice focuses on private equity, M&A, emerging growth investments and other corporate and commercial transactions.
His depth of experience ranges across billions of dollars worth of both domestic and international transactions and public and private deals. Since joining the firm, he has advised on transactions in numerous industries, ranging from specialty chemicals, clean technology and automotive to business services and financial services.
Over his long career in law and business, Mr. Felner has led transactions on the largest scale, leading the legal deal team for a global money center bank and worked extensively in the private equity and middle market as a lawyer and a business entrepreneur in the family office and maritime and energy industries.
Since joining the firm he has advised private equity firms and executives, family offices, family backed investment firms, privately held businesses, financial institutions, and special situations hedge funds, among other clients. Mr. Felner is the former Deputy General Counsel and chief transactional lawyer for Citigroup Inc. where he led the bank’s legal team for all strategic M&A and investments globally for almost 10 years.
Before returning to private practice, he co-founded and led two affiliated entrepreneurial investment businesses, FDX Capital LLC and FDX Offshore LLC where he focused on direct transactions with ultra-high net worth families and investments in the maritime and energy industries.
Mr. Felner was the senior-most corporate and transactional lawyer at Citigroup, reporting directly to the Company’s General Counsel and managing a team of 75 lawyers and staff. While at Citi he handled more than $100 billion of proprietary M&A transactions, divestitures, investments and joint ventures, in more than 25 countries. He also helped lead all of Citi’s multi-billion dollar recapitalization efforts during the financial crisis, including all legal aspects of the sovereign wealth investments and TARP.
Mr. Felner focuses on finding solutions and getting things done for his clients. He brings deep and hands on transactional experience, judgment and a highly commercial and client focused approach to deals. Having spent many years in the business world both as a senior officer of a global financial institution and as an investment business entrepreneur, he approaches all matters with a well-developed sensitivity to the business priorities, issues and objectives of the client.
Education:
- J.D., Boston University, 1990, magna cum laude
- B.A., Wesleyan University, 1986
Admissions : New York
Experience:
- Advised several investors on a series of growth capital investments in a Specialty Chemicals/Clean Technology business.
- Advising a family office backed private equity firm on a uniquely structured private equity fund focused on family office investors
- Partnered with a leading shipping pool operator, which has encompassed successful investments in the crude tanker market.
- Led a bidding team composed of a Fortune 100 Company, a Forbes 400 family office, a top infrastructure private equity firm and an LNG liquefaction plant developer seeking to establish a supply chain of LNG deliveries to the State of Hawaii.
- Morgan Stanley/Smith Barney Joint Venture (U.S.) – Senior supervisory role overseeing internal and external legal teams negotiating complex retail brokerage joint venture.
- Diners Club Divestiture (U.S.) – Led critical three-way negotiations mediating agreements among Citi and the General Counsels of both MasterCard and Discover in Discover’s purchase of the Diners Club franchise from Citi.
- Grupo Financiero Uno (Central America) – Led legal negotiations to buy leading Central American bank, with separate operations across six countries.
- Banco de Chile (Chile) – Creation of JV structure in which Citi merged local operations into a leading Chilean bank in return for minority stake with options to increase holdings over time. Developed unique regulatory and operational agreements to allow Banco de Chile to function as Citi’s hub in Chile.
- Knight Derivative Markets – Led legal team and developed alternative asset deal structure to address regulatory concerns regarding seller of Knight Options platform.
Cost
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