Ethan Feffer

Ethan Feffer is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group in the firm's Orange County office.

Areas of Practice

Mr. Feffer focuses on venture capital financings, private equity fund formation, mergers and acquisitions, 144A institutional private placements, and public offerings. He represents publicly traded and privately held companies, and investors, in a variety of industries, including financial services, real estate, life sciences, electronics and software.

Mr. Feffer has completed over $10 billion in financings and mergers and acquisitions for clients such as Bank of America, CalPERS, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Piper Jaffray, Wells Fargo, The Carlyle Group, Pequot Capital, Schroder Ventures and Versant Ventures. He has also assisted privately held companies in transactions with large public companies, including Boston Scientific, E*TRADE, Guidant, Medtronic and Novartis.

In addition to his transactional work, Mr. Feffer has extensive experience in public company reporting for NASDAQ and NYSE listed companies, including assisting them in complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and related stock exchange requirements. He serves as general counsel to publicly traded and privately held companies, where he advises boards of directors and handles the companies’ day-to-day legal needs.

In 2006, Mr. Feffer was named to the "Lawdragon 3000 Leading Lawyers in America", a client survey of the top 3000 lawyers in the United States, representing less than 1% of the legal profession in the country. In 2005, Mr. Feffer was named one of the “Top 20 Under 40” in the Daily Journal’s annual survey of the top 20 lawyers in California under 40 years old. In addition, in 2004 and 2005, Mr. Feffer was named a “Super Lawyer” in Los Angeles Magazine, where he was listed as one of the top securities and venture finance lawyers in Southern California.

Education

• J.D., University of California, Hastings College of the Law, 1992, Member, Hastings Law Journal
• B.A., University of California at Berkeley, 1987
• Russian study, Leningrad State University, USSR, 1996

Admissions

• California

Representative Transactions

• Represented SureFire, the world leader in military and sporting illumination products, in a private equity financing from Goldman Sachs and Brooklyn NY Holdings.
• Represented PeopleSupport (NASDAQ: PSPT), an offshore BPO company headquartered in Los Angeles with 9,000 employees operating primarily in the Philippines, in all corporate areas including handling its initial public offering of $48 million of common stock, a $96 million secondary offering led by Credit SUISSE, M&A transactions, corporate governance and public reporting.
• Represented Wells Fargo as indenture trustee in a $200 million 144A debt placement by a national equipment rental chain.
• Represented management in a $500 million leveraged buyout of an auto finance company from Ford Motor Credit, including a $150 million 144A debt placement.
• Represented Wells Fargo as indenture trustee in connection with the bankruptcy restructuring of U-Haul, including a $200 million 144A debt placement.
• Represented CalPERS as founding limited partner in several domestic and international real estate opportunity funds with aggregate capital commitments in excess of $1 billion.
• Represented BioLase Technologies (Nasdaq: BLTI), a dental laser company, in its $52 million secondary public offering of common stock.
• Represented The Carlyle Group, Schroder Ventures, Versant Ventures and other venture capital funds in a number of investments in health care companies.
• Represented privately held technology companies in equity financings from venture capital firms, including Canaan Ventures, MPM Capital, Mayfield Funds, New Enterprise Associates and Pequot Capital.