Capital Markets

As a full service global law firm, K&L Gates has the experience and resources necessary to consistently provide the high-quality of representation demanded by public companies. We offer the full scope of services in all matters related to securities law. Over the last two years, our capital markets lawyers have advised more than 300 public companies in a wide range of securities, compliance, transactional, and governance matters. 

The firm’s experience in capital markets and across a large client base, diverse both geographically, in industry, and in size, helps our clients keep current on rapidly changing market trends in transactional structures and negotiating positions.

K&L Gates regularly represents issuers, investment banks, placement agents, investors, and investment groups. In addition to serving as company counsel, we provide experienced representation as underwriters’ counsel in public offerings and other transactions.  These transactions include IPOs, follow-on offerings, shelf registrations and take-downs, 144A offerings, and PIPE transactions. Our capital markets lawyers have handled more than 320 public equity and debt offerings over the last decade, with a dollar volume of over $65 billion.

Our lawyers counsel numerous public companies on their continuing securities law reporting and compliance matters. A number of K&L Gates lawyers served in SEC staff positions and hold leadership positions in professional and securities industry organizations, enhancing our ability to provide focused advice on unusual and difficult SEC compliance, policy, and regulatory issues.

Recent highlights of the K&L Gates capital markets practice include:

• The U.S. News - Best Lawyers® 2011 – 2012 survey ranked K&L Gates as a national first-tier law firm in the areas of Securities/Capital Markets Law and Securities Regulation. K&L Gates was also named the national “Law Firm of the Year” for Corporate Governance Law.
• The American Lawyer 2012 Corporate Scorecard ranked K&L Gates No. 1 for REIT Equities, Issuer's Counsel by Value, and No. 5 for REIT Debt, Underwriter's Counsel by Volume.
• Corporate Board Member magazine and FTI Consulting, Inc. ranked the K&L Gates U.S. corporate practice among the top 25 national corporate law firms in its 2012 “America’s Best Corporate Law Firms” survey of nearly 2,000 general counsel of U.S. public companies.
• PrivateRaise ranked K&L Gates No. 5 on its list of the 2011 Top 25 PIPE Issuer Law Firms by number of deals advised.
• The firm’s Taipei office acted as general counsel to the first foreign company to have its shares traded on the Taiwan Emerging Stock Market.
• Our London AIM practice has advised on a number of “firsts” including:
  • the first Japanese company to come to AIM;
  • the first spin-out of a business from a Nasdaq parent company onto AIM; and,
  • the first U.S.-based “Inc” to list directly on the Official List of the LSE.