McGuireWoods Partner Jon Finger Honored as M&A Trailblazer by The National Law Journal

November 2, 2018

McGuireWoods partner Jon Finger was honored in The National Law Journal’s 2018 M&A and Antitrust Trailblazers issue for his pioneering role in the firm’s nationwide initiative to establish the pre-eminent practice for independent sponsor transactions and connect independent sponsors with capital partners for specific deals.

Finger’s practice focuses on private equity and corporate transactions and he was instrumental in creating McGuireWoods’ premier national conference that brings together independent sponsors and capital providers.

More than 600 deal professionals attended the second annual conference last month in Dallas, highlighting McGuireWoods’ leadership position in the independent sponsor space. Connections forged through the conference have produced numerous deals for McGuireWoods clients and contacts in the firm’s expanding private equity network.

“We wanted to grow our network, add value to our network and watch that network flourish, with no expectations about what we would get in return,” Finger told NLJ.

Mergers & Acquisitions magazine named McGuireWoods “Law Firm of the Year” in its Mid-Market M&A Awards and singled out the independent sponsor program as an innovation that adds value beyond the traditional role of legal counsel. McGuireWoods ranks among the leading law firms for middle-market private equity deals in Bloomberg’s league tables, partly because of its success with independent sponsor deals. Finger told NLJ that McGuireWoods is poised to build on its leadership in the sector.

“We expect to help curate more defined, long-term relationships between participants to reduce the need to habitually find a new capital source for every deal, combining the advantages of committed capital with traditional independent sponsor deals,” he said.