Chris Smith

Chris is an associate in the New York Capital Markets Group. Chris’s practice focuses on transactional and advisory matters related to derivatives. Chris represents both buy and sell-side institutions in connection with the development, structuring, negotiation and documentation of a wide variety of financial products. These products include deal-contingent swaps, interest rate swaps, currency swaps, and other funded and unfunded products.

Work Highlights

Selected experience includes:

• ISDA: advising on the industry consultation and drafting of the ISDA Digital Asset Definitions and related confirmations and guidance notes.
• ISDA: advising on Linklaters' collaboration with ISDA on ISDA Create and drafting the ISDA Clause Library.
• Multiple swap dealers and hedge funds: representing in connection with the structuring and execution of deal-contingent derivative transactions.
• Multiple swap dealers: advising on interest rate, FX, and commodity hedges in connection with high-yield credit facilities.
• One of the world’s largest pension plans: regularly advising on all matters related to cleared swaps and swap execution facilities.
• Close-out Netting: advising on close-out netting issues that have allowed market participants to reach positive netting conclusions on numerous counterparties not within scope of the industry netting opinions.  
• Regulatory Margin: negotiating regulatory initial margin documents for swap dealer and buy-side clients during phase 6.

Chris holds a Juris Doctor from Duke University School of Law, where he was an executive editor of the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy. He obtained a B.A. in History from Appalachian State University.