Ballard Spahr LLP

Finance

Partner

Dominic J. De Simone is a founding Co-Chair of Ballard Spahr’s National Finance Department, having worked to develop the business case and operating model and framework for the Department’s formation in 2019. He served, initially, as Department Co-Chair and then as Department Chair overseeing and guiding the Finance Department’s formation, day-to-day operations, and strategic growth for more than six years. Subsequently, he served as Department Vice Chair to facilitate the orderly transition of Department Chair leadership. Dominic continues to co-lead the firm’s Real Estate Private Credit and High-Yield, Distressed Real Estate, and Distressed Assets and Opportunities teams.

Dominic’s practice spans the full spectrum of real estate law, with a focus on complex real estate debt and equity transactions, deal structuring and restructuring, and distressed asset matters. He represents institutional, private credit, and debt fund lenders, investors, developers, preferred equity and other capital providers, Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (CPACE) lenders, special servicers, and receivers in sophisticated transactions nationwide.

Included in Dominic’s work is a concentration on structuring, documenting, and restructuring complex real estate finance and multi-party/multi-tier capital transactions including related secondary market, intercreditor, and enforcement matters. His practice also encompasses advising on all aspects of distressed asset matters including rescue capital transactions and other opportunistic investing and lending matters.

He regularly advises on the creation, documentation, and administration of programmatic lending platforms, including bridge and construction lending programs, as well as on bespoke debt and equity transactions involving both to-be-built and existing assets and multi-tier capital structures. His experience also includes secured revolving credit and warehouse facilities, note-on-note financings, and a wide array of single- and multi-lender structures such as acquisition, construction, ground leasehold mortgage, Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), mezzanine, and subscription facilities; A/B loan structures; participations; joint ventures, tax credit transactions; CPACE transactions, sale-leasebacks and build-to-suit transactions; bond financings; and a variety of secondary market transactions.

His transactional experience spans all major property and project types, including retail, office, industrial, multifamily, single-family rental, student housing, hospitality, residential and commercial condominiums (including broken condominium projects), single-family tract developments, land acquisition and site development, assisted-living facilities, gaming, and mixed-use projects.

In addition to his finance practice, Dominic has significant experience in property and loan acquisitions and dispositions, project development including ground lease development projects, Real Estate Owned (REO) transactions, receivership matters and sales, and retail, office, and warehouse leasing for both landlords and tenants. He also advises on build-to-suit, retail condominium, REIT-related, and military housing transactions.

Dominic is a Fellow of both the American College of Real Estate Lawyers (ACREL) and the American College of Mortgage Attorneys (ACMA). Within ACMA, he serves as Chair of the Capital Markets Committee and as Pennsylvania State Chair.

Professional Activities

American Bar Association

New Jersey State Bar Association

Pennsylvania Bar Association

Philadelphia Bar Association, Real Property Section, Financing and Securitization of Real Estate Committee, Co-Chair

Former member of Drexel University, Krall Center for Corporate and Executive Education Advisory Council

Former member of The Reinvestment Fund, Inc. (a Philadelphia-based, nonprofit organization promoting socially responsible development), Housing/Commercial Real Estate Committee

Admissions

New Jersey

Pennsylvania

New York

Education: Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law (J.D. 1995), Drexel University (B.S. 1988)