"Great judgment. He understands issues quickly and thinks expansively about solutions."
Chambers USA 2024
"A leader in this space. He is intelligent and thoughtful."
Chambers USA 2024
"Great track record of employing creativity to solve complex situations."
Chambers USA 2024
Band 1 – Derivatives
Chambers USA 2024
"Strong expertise in the corporate equity derivatives space and is able to navigate the client and banks through very complex transactions."
The Legal 500 US 2024
Hall of Fame ‒ Structured Finance: Derivatives & Structured Products
The Legal 500 US 2024
"He is the legal benchmark for complex structured equity derivative transactions and the associated securities law."
Chambers USA 2023
"He has outstanding expertise in complex derivatives transactions."
Chambers USA 2023
"Witold has incredible judgement, he understands the legal issues and the commercial risks."
Chambers USA 2023
"Witold Balaban is a leader in the derivatives industry and a go-to lawyer for all equity derivatives and securities law questions."
The Legal 500 US 2023
Profile
Witold Balaban is recognized by leading global financial institution clients for his knowledge of the equity markets and the various financial products developed over the last couple of decades to enable corporate clients to restructure their balance sheets and to finance, monetize, and/or hedge large concentrated equity positions. Witold's market knowledge and his technical product experience makes him the go-to person for structuring complex and first-of-its-kind equity-linked transactions spanning a number of jurisdictions.
Witold advises clients on financing strategies relating to concentrated equity positions and on balance sheet restructuring transactions, including:
Convertible and exchangeable bond offerings (both optional and mandatory, including trust-issued mandatory exchangeables) and related call spread overlays
Convertible bond exchanges and related call spread unwinds
Structured margin loans
Various other equity-based financing, hedging, and monetization transactions, such as funded collars, variable prepaid forwards, covered calls, and combinations of the foregoing
Fixed and variable share forward sales and related equity offerings, including registered and Rule 144 exempt block sales and at-the-market (ATM) offerings
Structured issuer share repurchase transactions
Witold has held a number of leadership roles at the firm, including as former Global Co-Chair of Latham & Watkins’ Financial Institutions Industry Group. He is also the former Global Co-Chair of the firm’s Capital Markets Practice. In this role, Witold focused on building and marketing Latham’s unique global capital markets offering that provides the firm’s global financial institution clients with integrated, top-tier financial regulatory coverage spanning the US, the UK, the EU, and Asia.
Experience
Witold represents a number of global financial institution clients in connection with equity derivatives products and equity-linked products, both OTC and distributed in capital markets. Clients include:
Goldman Sachs
Deutsche Bank
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
J.P. Morgan
Morgan Stanley
Credit Suisse
UBS
Barclays
Qualifications
Bar Qualification
England and Wales (Registered Foreign Lawyer)
New York
Education
JD, New York University School of Law, 1993 magna cum laude, Law Review Alumni Association Award (Third in Class), George A. Katz Memorial Award (Securities Regulation), American Jurisprudence Award in Property, Spring 1991, Order of the Coif
BA, Queens' College, 1990 summa cum laude, Valedictorian
Latham honored as Global Law Firm of the Year in GlobalCapital’s Global and Americas Derivatives Awards for innovation and significant contributions to the advancement of the derivatives industry.
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