About

Number of years practice: 19 Law school attended: University of Wisconsin, Columbia Law School Languages spoken: English and Spanish Principal practice areas: Acquisition Finance, Capital Markets, Leveraged Finance, M&A, Private Equity Admissions: New York

Part of Cleary Gottlieb’s highly regarded Latin America team, Duane McLaughlin has advised the issuers and underwriters in many of the global equity offerings undertaken by leading Mexican multinationals, and worked on some of the most complex cases in Mexico. Highlights of his work in Mexico include acting as counsel to a syndicate of the world’s largest banks in successfully completing the refinancing of approximately $7bn of Mexican cement company Cemex’s bank and private placement debt, in a global, out-of-court process. As part of this transaction, McLaughlin helped devise a novel structure that eliminated certain creditor protections from non-participating creditors, leading to over 90% of participating creditors exchanging their claims for new debt instruments. McLaughlin regularly represents private equity funds and their portfolio companies, and primarily focuses on bank financings, high-yield debt issuances and initial public offerings. n